Bound in Chakra, Bound in Soul
by Skamikaze
Summary: After forcefully having his mind opened to the Kyuubi's presence after Jiraiya's push, Naruto is now forced to spend every sleeping moment in the company of the Nine-tailed Fox. Eventual KyuubixNaruto. Not Yaoi.
1. Into the sewer

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><p>He never could tell precisely when he slipped away into unconsciousness that evening; maybe before he fell to the ground? Because he definitely couldn't recall hitting it in any way. He probably wouldn't have realized his lack of consciousness until he had woken up, but then he found himself knee deep in water in a sewer that he had only visited a few hours ago… He pretty much figured it out that he couldn't be awake at that moment.<p>

This was very bad news and Naruto would have done something about it, but the water around his legs was too uncomfortable for him to do any thinking.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, Naruto thought that it would have been better to continue the earthward plunge he was taking off the Frog's back rather than come here to find himself with that 'thing' again.

But the water was too evil and distracting for him to focus on anything.

He grumbled out a horde of bitter nothings, and then he frowned even more when he heard them echo back towards him, hollow and mocking.

Then he tried moving his legs around, shaking off the disgusting feeling the water left on his drenched skin, but he gave up quickly. The water was everywhere, after all.

"Ugh!" Grimacing in discomfort, he swiveled his torso around to look either way in the corridor he stood in, but he couldn't see any raised or dry surfaces. It didn't help that the entire area he could see was probably smaller than his apartment. The only things visible were the dark, dank walls with pipes running chaotically over and through them, the water-flooded floor, and the slimy, fractured roof, complete with broken metal meshes.

And the consistently annoying sound of dripping fluid kept coming from somewhere in the distance…

Acting on a random impulse, he started trudging through the water in a completely unplanned way; going left and right without thinking of where he was going, the goal of finding a dry place to stand on the only idea running through his brain. He kept on walking through the water -he hoped it wasn't actual sewage- but he kept going in circles, passing through the same point again and again, through alternating cycles of darkness and light as he chose a new direction after every corridor was walked through.

Suddenly, he found a somewhat raised dais a few meters in front of him that was completely dry.

DRY!

Eager and smiling like a cart of ramen had derailed in front of him, he redoubled his efforts to reach the elevation, jumping at the chance to get out of the miserable dampness he had been in from who knows when.

He raced onwards, now running like a deprived alcoholic after the last bottle of sake in the world, but he stopped a foot short of the arid haven he'd found; the orange glow around that area was much stronger than it had been elsewhere. Dreading the inevitable, he glanced upwards, slowly inching his gaze to the left of the hallway knowing what he would find there.

A huge cage, with a small plaque bearing the kanji for 'seal' where a doorknob would be in a regular double door.

He backed up a step in fear, feet plopping through the flood until he stopped. But then he froze up in a huge internal conflict. To get to the precious oasis of dryness he sought, he would have to -possibly- face the fox. But to avoid the fox, he would have to spend more time in the miserable -oh so miserable- water logged sewer he already stood in.

His eyes wandered to his feet, trying to see into the murky depths of the evil that surrounded him… but he only saw the beginning of his knees until they disappeared into the blackness beneath.

He backed up another step, then looked at the haven in front of him, and almost whimpered in misery. It looked so damn seductive…

"Aw, what the hell," he growled, and sprung onto the platform, groaning in relief when the oppressive pressure around his calves faded away. He sighed, rubbing and wringing his soaked pant legs – then abruptly stopped as a deep and penetrating snarl rang out from the direction of the Fox's prison. His head turned towards it involuntarily, and he looked upwards. Right into the blood-red eyes of the nine tailed fox itself.

Who was looking right at him.

Immediately, it was as if a huge barrier had been removed from his mind, and now he truly felt awake for the first time since he found himself here. And soon, right after this burst of awareness, came a burst of killing intent, as sweat pouringly hard to face it was the first time around.

He was now conscious of a few things that he wasn't before, most noticeably, his heart. He couldn't remember feeling it beating while he was engaged in the pursuit for dryness, although that didn't prove anything seeing that he couldn't feel his heart beating anyways.

But now, his heart kept speeding up the longer he maintained eye contact with the bijuu in front of him, and it almost jerked up into his throat when the demon bared its absolutely enormous fangs.

"**What MORE do you want now**?" It growled out in a voice that seemed a lot more guttural than it was the last time.

"**My gift of chakra was sufficiently generous to keep you out of my sight for another decade! Why have you come back?**"

Normally, Naruto would have answered with a -in his opinion- kick-ass reply almost immediately. But he actually had no idea about why he was here. It didn't help that the killer intent had paralyzed his tongue, to some extent. He was about to stutter out some words, his lips already opening jerkily, when the Kyuubi interrupted him again.

"**Are you scared? Or has that ridiculous mouth of yours frozen?**"

The slightest hint of a smirk ghosted over the exposed jaws of the nine-tails. It had been longer than a decade since he last got such a prolonged reaction of fear, and seeing the boy's face was very nostalgic.

Naruto wasn't known as a complete knuckle-head for nothing, though. He managed to shake off the aura of despair, pointing his finger at the fuzzball that was staring him down, and shouted out what he thought was a very good reply.

"It's working just fine, ya stupid fox! Just shut up and send me back now! We both know I don't wanna be here anymore than you want me too."

He poured his frustration and indignity into every word.

"**Gladly**," came the blood-chilling answer.

A pulse of red chakra emerged from inside the cage, and promptly bonked -yes, bonked- Naruto upside the head.

Both the fox and the boy waited for the boy to go.

But the boy didn't waver away, or vanish into thin air, or burst into flames; the Kyuubi was very disappointed about the last thing especially.

Instead, he was assaulted by an overpowering desire to eat Ramen. He could have sworn he'd stashed a few packets of the Instant stuff somewhere in the cabinets of his home, but he couldn't find his home anywhere.

Where was it?

Maybe the face with the giant red eyes and huge teeth ate it. Wait… It belonged to somebody, that face did. Oh, it was the Kyuubi's.

"Can you please puke my house back up? I really need to eat my Ramen, Huge-Face-Kyuubi-sama!"

"…**That did not go the way it was supposed to**."

The fox sent another wave of killing intent, potent enough to instantly kill a tiger. The boy only froze up slightly, eyes wide open and quivering, before screaming out, "What the hell?"

He looked around, probably expecting to find the walls of a hospital greeting him.

"I thought you were sending me back!" Naruto complained.

"**Hmmm… It seems like neither one of us is in control at the moment.**"

The boy's eyes widened momentarily, and then scrunched back together in anger.

"How can you tell, Damnit?"

"**Because when you came**," the bijuu began, resting its head on its front haunches, "**You weren't in possession of even a half of your pathetic mind. If you had come here by actually trying to do so, you would have been as aware of yourself as you are now**."

"Huh?"

"**If I try to force you out, you will only return to the retarded state I pulled you out of**."

"Huh? Why? And how do I know this isn't some ploy to keep me in here so that I die on the outside?"

"**Do you **_**want**_** me to demonstrate**?" the kyuubi snapped, an orange tendril of chakra extending and waving threateningly in front of him, ready to snake out and hit Naruto again if needed.

"…No."

Sighing, Naruto walked back and sat against the wall that lay furthest away from his unwilling sewermate and slunk down into a thinking pose, crossing his legs and sinking his head into his hands.

The similarities between the way the two of them were sitting were lost on them both though.

What can this all mean? Naruto began to wonder, slowly accelerating his train of thought. The train had two carriages at the moment, one labeled 'I can't get out of here!' and the other 'That fox can do absolutely nothing... Useless furball.'

He added a third one soon, this one labeled 'This is boring, believe it.'

The killing intent had receded, and almost unconsciously, Naruto began to breathe a little more easily. His shoulders relaxed too, and he drew his hands through his hair, wiping some of the accumulated sweat from his forehead in the process.

Nothing could hide the simple fact that Naruto was afraid.

And quite angry.

He added a fourth carriage, this one at the front of the train now. 'Where in the stupid elemental nations is Ero-sennin?'

Naruto had no way of knowing what had happened to him. No way of knowing what time it was and no way of knowing just how much of it had passed already… Where the hell was that pervert when you needed him?

He had pushed Naruto off of a cliff to get him in this damn sewer. He must be able to bring him out somehow.

Slowly, Naruto's thoughts begun to loose coherence, the train and its carriages were forgotten, and Naruto sank back into the craving for Ramen that had had the fox sweat dropping a few moments ago.

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><p>If Naruto had awoken at that moment, he would have seen something that would have made him question the integrity of the universe. Jiraiya was sitting next to where he lay on a hospital bed, looking like someone had spat in his breakfast. And when a nurse walked past him, he didn't even look.<p>

At all.

Jiraiya was too busy contemplating the recent developments to care about any women walking around him. He had seen Gamabunta catch Naruto before he fell to the ground from his back, and he'd wasted no time in bringing him to a hospital.

It wasn't necessary; the boy would have recovered from his ordeal in a matter of days anyways, but when he'd held Naruto in his arms, he'd felt peculiar spikes of chakra emanate from the vicinity of Naruto's seal. The closest thing he could compare these spikes were to the feeling one got when someone opened a bottle of Champagne in one's face.

That did not bode well.

And when he'd gotten to the hospital and lain Naruto down on a bed, he'd pushed his shirt up to see what had happened for himself. Having fixed the seal after it had been re-enforced by the Five-Pronged seal, he was well aware of its structure and function. Admiration for its intricacies aside, he had realized that more than a few links in the seal were very volatile in their power to contain and limit as seals were supposed to do, which Jiraiya had assumed was to allow the Kyuubi's Chakra to be used by its container.

But a few of the aforementioned links had now vanished completely, and Jiraiya was left to question Minato's mental stability during his last days. Why in the world would his Student design a seal that could be broken with nothing more than a few surges of chakra? And with a 'pop' too?

Since then he had been measuring and studying his 'disciple's seal in tandem with the chakra spikes, and he had also recorded more than a few instances when the Kyuubi's chakra had emerged. Once, the surge of chakra was so strong that Jiraiya was about to stand up in shock, before the energy fluttered and dissipated through the network of fail safes on the seal.

It would be an understatement to say that Jiraiya was confused about what he should do now. Tell the Sandaime? Of course, that would be wise. Tell Naruto? …He would probably realize it himself. Probably.

But what if the rest of the village and its figureheads heard that Naruto's Seal was dissolving? The panic that would emerge from _that_ would set Konoha in flames.

What if he told no-one about this? That situation had the potential to go horribly awry. What if the seal DID dissolve?

_Sigh._

Something had to be done. But Jiraiya decided to wait. Firstly, because he still had faith in his student and his ability to create seals that were virtually unbreakable. And secondly, because he felt that Naruto had a right to know and to give his view on the situation before he himself did anything. After all, he had visited the Kyuubi in person after he'd been pushed off the cliff, Maybe that… Had… Something… To do with this...

Oh no. If this was what Jiraiya thought it was, he was so screwed...

Especially because he was the only person who could be blamed.

_Sure, just toss him off a cliff Jiraiya, What could _POSSIBLY_ go wrong?_

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><p><strong>If you review, try to focus on plot ideas, because I have a huge problem with Inspiration...<strong>

**X.x**


	2. Welcome to my world

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><p>'…Why are you orange?'<p>

The Kyuubi's left ear twitched for what seemed like the hundredth time.

'Is it because you like orange?'

Its closed eyelids started to tremble.

'I love orange, but nobody else does.'

_I can see why, if you're the one preaching its virtues._

'Do you like orange because _you're_ orange?'

'**What do _you_ think?**' The fox snarled abruptly, jamming two of its tails into its ears and curling one of them in front of its eyes.

'I think you like orange.'

'…'

At this rate, the fox was definitely going to blow up from sheer misery and annoyance. Left with no logical solution, It started to bang its head against the ground in a steady, calming rhythm.

_Thud… Thud… Thud… Thud…_

The boy on the other side of the prison bars had given it another reason to pursue freedom more desperately than ever. Screw 'Operation: Revenge on _that_ Uchiha'. The bijuu would do anything to get away from this torture…

Then the sound of human laughter, the first it'd heard in nearly twenty years, broke through its plugged ears. The fox raised the tails on its face cautiously to see… the brat sitting back against the wall and chuckling.

Naruto had just 'woken up' again.

By the bijuu's estimate, a day had passed since the boy had first appeared in his mindscape. And during that time, He had passed into a delirious state for a few hours once earlier, starting a few minutes after his first encounter with the fox, in fact… and during that time, the boy had acted as if someone had ripped his self-respect from him and replaced it with the urge to babble endlessly about absolutely nothing. It was fine for the first hour or so; the nine-tails had managed to stop the madness with nothing but killing intent, but the source of its misery had slowly grown accustomed to it. Now he barely even flinched while yowling about whatever he was yowling about.

It had been Ramen earlier.

This time, it was 'orange'.

And in between the two times, the boy had just sat there, head sunk into his arms.

But now…

'Hehehe… Ohohooo God…The mighty Kyuubi, curled up like a cat… HAHAHAAA!... Are you scared of me? Huh? Huh?' The brat did an odd little happy dance that made him look like a dying frog.

_Oh sweet sage of-_

'Alright, Alright, so you don't like orange. No need to start crying about it!'

'**Crying? CRYING? You miserable little-**'

'Yeah yeah, I've heard it all a million times. Brat, idiot, monster, moron, loser… dobe... Be original.' He was sticking his tongue out at the fox now.

'**-wretch!**'

'...'

_HA! Got ya now!_

But the boy just sighed, the mirth slowly draining out of him until he slumped back onto the floor.

The Kyuubi felt relief surge through it on hearing that little whoosh of wind; it'd finally get some peace now… something it'd gotten very used to during the long stays inside other human's bodies.

...But a small part of the fox was glad that the long period of inactivity had finally been broken. The rest of it though, kept berating the fates for sending the 'interruption' that they did.

The demon slowly slid away from Naruto's view, lying down again to savour what little amount of serenity it could before the 'Orangeand Ramen Zombie' returned.

'I feel like I'm in jail, damn it.'

'**Really? Hehehe... Welcome to my world, brat.**'

Naruto, in the dark depths of the fox's cage, could see the demon's glowing teeth curled into a knowing smile.

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><p>Being out of the preliminaries, although sad, had its perks for Sakura. She was able to do so much more that she couldn't do before, especially with her recent reunion with Ino.<p>

For example, She'd spent a whole day at the Yamanaka flower shop doing nothing but talking with her re-instated friend about things they hadn't told each other for two or three years. Of course, their animated chatter had sent nearly every one of the shop's customers out of the doors, huffing in frustration, but it had been worth it in the end.

Their moms were especially happy that they were hanging out with girls for once.

At present though, she was arranging a rose on top of a floating lotus leaf on a bowl of water near Lee's side-table in the Hospital.

Lee was sleeping. With the sunshine streaming through the window and pouring on his face -and his hair reflecting a fair portion of it- he looked considerably better than when he was clad in that jumpsuit of his with his hair bunched in a hemisphere. The wildness suited him.

She gave a final glance to the flowers she'd set for him, then left the ward, heading back home.

At least she was, until she saw something unsightfully orange from the corner of her eye.

That particular shade of that particular colour could only mean one thing.

NARUTO.

Her feet shifted her path automatically, and before she knew it, she was entering the door of a ward and then standing next to the teammate of hers that had tried hugging her yesterday.

She had a fleeting sense of apprehension as she considered that her punch might have landed him here… But then she remembered the _other_ times she'd hit him that hard.

_Back during the academy, during their D-rank missions,__ on their journey to the land of waves, during their stay at Tsunami-san's house, during their exam in the forest of death... Darn near everywhere…_

_All those punches, no wonder he's turned out to be such a knuckle-head._

Although slightly guilty, she wasn't sorry. He was too annoying to ignore, too persistant to dismiss and too loud to bear. A sucker-punch to the head was the simplest way of dealing with her hyper teammate, so why not use it?

She was curious about why he was here though, and she looked around the ward to find a nurse or a clipboard containing the medic's diagnosis for the only patient in the ward, but she could find neither.

That was weird, since there usually was someone on attendance in a ward at all times.

Turning back, she pulled a chair and sat down next to Naruto's limp form. She crossed her fingers on her lap, looking around at the slightly dusty beds, Naruto's forehead protector lying on a side-table and the crumbly wallpaper before returning her gaze to the blond.

_Well… What now?_

Sakura looked him over, and Naruto seemed to be okay. No signs of physical injury or of pain and discomfort marred his face. In fact, he looked very bright and wholesome; something that wasn't solely linked to the abundance of sunlight that fell on his prone form.

_People are very different when they go to sleep… So vulnerable…_

She almost reached forwards to muss Naruto's blonde mess of hair, but stopped herself at the last moment, fingers curling over his unguarded hairline. She didn't know why, but a very fundamental part of her instincts seemed to forbid her to do it. She withdrew her hand, noticing that it felt oddly numb and prickly.

Now why would that happen?

Attributing it to some random freak accident, she left the ward, suddenly remembering that she had an arrangement with Ino at her house later this evening. She was so excited! They were finally gonna show each other their Sasuke scrapbooks! She couldn't wait to flaunt off her special Team 7 access to Ino… Oh, the look on her face was gonna be priceless!

Leaving the hospital for the open roads beyond, she also made a mental note to bring a flower for Naruto every time she came to the hospital. She skipped off towards the Yamanaka compound, not noticing the feeling of heaviness that was slowly building up in her hand.

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><p><strong>YaYY! Reviews! Now go make me some. It'll be VERY highly appreciated :P<strong>


	3. It talks!

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**Anywho, Thanks for the reviews and alert subscriptions, yada yada yada, and I hope no-one gets disappointed by this little fanfic...**

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><p>The silence had lasted for too long.<p>

The time had come to say something that had been on his mind since he ended up here.

Oh yes. He was gonna say it. Now.

"Fuzzball, It doesn't bother you when I talk about Ramen or The colour Orange, does it?" Naruto hesitantly began.

The Giant orange fox blinked for a second, opening its eyes and staring at him incredulously.

"…**Are you serious?**"

"Uhhh… Right," Naruto grimaced, feeling a sense of impending doom. He tried to salvage the situation.

"Hey, what is it with you anyways? How can you live for so long without talking to anyone?" Naruto whined out, hoping to goad the fox into a conversation.

"…**Did I have a choice?**" The fox narrowed its eyes slightly, and Naruto started to sweat.

"Uhhh… Right," Naruto mumbled.

_C'mon, c'mon! Think, damn it!_

Naruto decided to go with the first thing that came to his mind.

"So… How're ya doin'?"

The fox's glare turned downright murderous, and naruto swore that its tails fluffed up.

"…**Are you Mocking ME?**" It snarled out, baring its teeth.

"NO! No, I'm just being civil, damn it!" The blonde shouted, flailing his arms about in helplessness.

"…**Stupid brat**," The fox muttered, settling down once more.

"Ah, come on! There's gotta be _something_ on your mind!"

"…**Why can't you just shut up?**"

"Aren't you bored? Why can't you just go along with it and say something for once?"

"**Heh**," The Kyuubi chuckled dryly. "**Say something? To you? Go to hell, brat.**"

"Grrr… Staying with you is hell enough," Naruto frowned, frustrated by his failure to get a positive reaction from the only intelligent being in his vicinity.

He didn't know why he expected one in the first place, if the Demon was what the villagers and everyone else made him out to be, but he was determined to try.

"And I don't even know why I'm here. I don't know what's going on outside, I don't know… I don't know anything," he turned around, head downcast at the reminder he had just given himself.

He lapsed into silence, following his thoughts down a moody trail until they disappeared somewhere into the 'drip drip' of the background. His gaze drifted to the roof of his prison, noticing that it was now in a much better state than it had been before. A lot less of the pipes were leaking, and most of the meshes and grates were no longer broken.

_I wonder why..._

Moments passed by in silence before he tried again, this time taking a different approach. His persistence had always been awarded with the response he desired, and he had formed his own personal techniques of 'Annoying-people-until-they-give-in'. They always worked, damn it!

He wasn't backing down this time.

"Say Fuzzball?" He called out in a voice toned down to almost a whisper.

The Kyuubi opened one of its eyes to look at Naruto for a moment, one of its tails swishing, before it closed it again and grumbled.

"Are you mad at me?" He asked now, trying to look as forlorn and melancholy as possible.

The fox growled for a while, and Naruto could swear he caught it mumbling 'cursed ramen' before it grudgingly intoned: "**…No.**"

"Huh? Why?" Naruto gasped, surprised.

"**Why would I be? You're nothing but an insignificant insect who happened to be born at the right time to have one such as myself sealed within you. Hating you would be pointless.**"

_Insignificant insect, huh? _Naruto thought, pissed, with an expression on his face that was more suited to one who'd just drunk a glass of rancid milk.

_He calls his container insignificant, huh?_

He calmed himself down though, determined not to loose the opportunity to talk to the fox. He tried again, although his tone was a lot more strained now.

"Hey… fuzzy?"

He needed to find better nicknames for the demon.

"**Grrr…What?**" The fox growled.

"What happened? On 'That' night, ya know?" Naruto inquired, hoping that touching something personal would urge the Kyuubi to say something meaningful.

The demon's eyes opened completely, their red irises glinting in contrast to their black surroundings. Naruto observed, trying to see if any emotions passed through the fox's visage.

Was that sadness? Rage? …Regret?

"**I don't want to talk about it,**" the fox muttered, probably somewhat shaken since it didn't close its eyes again. What had his question sparked in the bijuu's mind? What memories would cause someone as stoic as the nine-tails to look so… vulnerable?

Naruto wasn't sure though, since he knew he wasn't the best person at reading emotions. He couldn't read _people_ well enough; he was amazed he was able to make as much headway with a_ fox_ as he had done already.

"Oh. That's fine," Naruto conceded. He'd gotten what he'd wanted from the fox; a reaction that wasn't angry or dismissive. He knew the rest would happen on its own now.

And he could see the fox shifting, moving its head off of its right arm and placing it in the centre of the floor, using a tail under its neck as a cushion.

And for the first time since Naruto had seen the fox, it started a conversation that wasn't beginning with a threat.

"**Brat…**"

"Yes, Fuzzball?"

"…**Don't call me that.**"

"Well, then don't call me 'Brat'. I have a name too, damn it! Naruto Uzumaki!" Naruto was scowling on the outside, but on the inside, he felt like flying with the rush of his newest accomplishment.

But the Kyuubi was completely serious now, fixating its gaze on Naruto and holding it. While Naruto slowly lost his grimace, the Kyuubi started to speak.

"**You started drawing from my chakra reserves a few months ago.**"

"Oh! Oh! You wanna hear about it?"

The Kyuubi didn't object, and Naruto took it as a sign to continue.

Taking in a deep breath of whatever passed for air in his mindscape, he elaborated, a grin on his face.

"There was this really awesome battle against a rogue missing-nin that I was loosing at first, and Sasuke-teme, one of the ninjas on my team, almost died. I kinda lost it, and I didn't know it was your chakra I was drawing, but I wasn't complaining, and…"

The Kyuubi's eyes narrowed in thought, paying attention to Naruto's every word, trying to glean as much information as possible from Naruto's childish way of speaking.

Naruto didn't know it, but he had managed to do something that was nearly impossible to accomplish, something that was monumental and would change his life forever; making the nine-tailed fox actually care.

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><p>"Hmmm…"<p>

The white-haired man stared deeply into his notebook while scribbling something down into it. His expression was speculative, as if he was solving one of the many great mysteries of life.

But slowly, a slight smirk made its way onto his visage, and his eyes widened until his eyebrows slid under his forehead protector.

And in a matter of milliseconds, his mouth fractured into a wide crescent, and formed the look that was the landmark of lechery, the pinnacle of perversion… The Pervy-grin.

Jiraiya was VERY proud of this particular facial expression.

His notepad received a few more notes, and then sat idly open until Jiraiya came off his nosebleed-inducing high. But the expression lingered on his face.

Lingered long enough for a particular pink haired kunoichi to enter the ward where Jiraiya was bending over Naruto's uncovered stomach, see the blood-chilling expression on his face, and-

"Get your filthy hands off Naruto, you pervert!"

-punch Jiraiya in the kisser with enough strength to land him on the other side of the ward, all expressions of joy erased from his face.

The fallen sage looked up to see his attacker; a girl who was literally breathing fire while cracking her knuckles.

_Never thought anger could prompt out handless Katon jutsu… I wonder what 'Other' emotions would prompt…_

Holding back a giggle from the new directions his muses of porn led his thoughts to, he stood up slowly, rubbing his right cheek.

"Oh, you must be that girl Naruto tried to hug the other day," Jiraiya said, smiling at the memory.

"Calm down, I'm Naruto's Sensei. No need to go berserk on me, I was merely examining his chakra system," he said, trying to impose a semblance of authority in the room. He had just noticed something troubling on the girl's hand, and he had to address the issue before it got out of hand.

"Don't count on it, you perverted geezer. And what's wrong with Naruto?" Sakura asked, her curiosity temporarily over-riding her disgust and anger.

Jiraiya came up with some medical nonsense. "He's suffering from heavy chakra depletion, and the seal the Grass-nin placed on his stomach is interfering with his recovery. That's why his stomach's uncovered, and why people have been forbidden from entering his ward, a precaution I implemented, but one that you, apparently, didn't care about."

The girl had the shame to look a little guilty.

_Phew, looks like she bought it._

Jiraiya had to make sure that no word of the seal's weakness got out, and Kunoichi were usually the most apt at spreading rumours. He doubted that she knew about Naruto's little problem, but then again, they were on the same team, and paranoia was a very necessary personality trait for every ninja, more so for the strongest ones.

"And I can see that you tried to touch him, didn't you?" Jiraiya said, looking at the kunoichi's right hand, which hung limply and was bandaged amateurly.

"Huh? No, I didn't touch him, I-"

"Your hand shows signs of chakra poisoning." Jiraiya interrupted.

She paled. Considerably.

"But- But how?"

"Naruto's Chakra has been spiking up considerably. When you tried to touch him yesterday, his Chakra must have infiltrated your tenketsu and festered, bringing your hand down from the inside. It's been getting numb and paralysed for quite a while now, hasn't it?" Jiraiya exhaustedly asked, rubbing his temples.

Sakura wordlessly nodded, her breaths coming in quicker.

"I'd better take care of it before it gets worse." Jiraiya closed his hands for a moment in concentration before they took in an aquamarine glow, and he grabbed Naruto's teammate's arm before she could object, circling his hand around the base of her elbow and slowly drawing it upwards.

A few wisps of maroon flitted away from the range of the medical jutsu.

She withdrew her hand once it was released, testing it for mobility, and clenched it, satisfied, but she still mumbled out "pervert".

"When is Naruto going to wake up?" She asked, looking at her team-mate in something akin to sadness. She almost inched towards him, before remembering her hand and how much it had scared her when she and Ino had noticed how she couldn't even pick a flower up, and nothing they did would fix it.

"I really can't say," Jiraiya answered, trying to get rid of the annoying little brat before she asked too many questions.

"Now that your hand is healed, you should go."

"Uh… Okay, uhh…" She hesitated, and Jiraiya took this as a sign that she did not know of who he was.

He began to recite an introduction: "Jiraiya, the toad sage, stealer of a thousand hearts, the envy of men and the desire of all women, the-"

"Yeah, sure. Thank you," she left, still slightly shaken up, but visibly recovering.

_The baka found a Sannin to teach him? Well, he's as stupid as they get, so I guess it doesn't count for much but still…And I'm not buying his explanation about my hand. There's no way a normal person's chakra can spike out of their body in their sleep! There's something wrong about this whole situation…_

Obviously, the baka-Sannin had underestimated her intelligence. He would pay for it later, Sakura swore.

Jiraiya, left hanging in his 'manly' pose with his head thrown back and his hands on his belt, frowned, then sighed in relief.

Finally! Now he could follow his trails of inspiration uninterrupted, and he had such a golden streak going too, what with the masterpiece that he knew was emerging. He seated himself back near Naruto's bed, scribbling on his notepad once again.

* * *

><p><strong>...<strong>

**X.x**


	4. On the outside

**...**

* * *

><p>Naruto was blabbering happily in the state that the fox was beginning to identify as the substitute for dreaming that existed in this place. A few hours each day saw the boy stripped of his intelligence (and the Kyuubi cringing with annoyance), before he regained consciousness, refreshed and active.<p>

Ignoring the mindless chatter, the Kyuubi began to reminisce. The Fox had had one of the most interesting conversations in its life the day before. Not that it was exceptionally deep or anything; the deepest Naruto could get was to the bottom of his ramen bowl, but the severe lack of conversations in the Demon's life made it qualify. It wasn't so much a conversation as a 'listen-to-the-brat-rant' session during which the Kyuubi occasionally commented on a few things.

It was enlightening.

_The first time he used my Chakra was inside the '_Demon_' Ice Mirrors, _the Kyuubi thought sardonically.

And it was troubling.

There was an _Uchiha_ on the boy's team. He was the 'last' one, to be exact, and one that was quite revenge driven by the looks of it.

Nothing good ever came out of associating with those Red-Eyed freaks -The Kyuubi's eyes were most definitely crimson, not red- And something had to be done about it.

The fox was already planning several ways to make sure that its container remained safe from now on. It might've appeared to be unusually benevolent of it to think about someone else's safety, but it knew its intentions were purely selfish.

The eyes that had vanquished the bijuu's free-will were still out there, and inside this body, they could not affect the Kyuubi in any direct way. It was the only reason why it'd even considered helping the brat out with its chakra when he'd asked for it the first time around, the fox told itself.

And so, The Kyuubi had formed an agenda of sorts, a set series of tasks to accomplish with its container in the shortest amount of time possible.

The first one, of course, was to examine what had happened with the blond jinchuriki that had caused his consciousness to manifest in his mindscape for such a large period of time. Such a prolonged mental imprisonment was bound to debilitate the mind of any sane individual –the fox didn't count as sane- and even now, the boy's stretches of inactivity had been getting longer.

The second was to exploit this in the fullest manner possible. Which might involve a lot of talking with the Brat. Sigh.

The third was to secure a foothold in the back of the boy's mind so that the Nine-tails could monitor the boy's surroundings actively, and nudge his attention to the 'right' things.

The immediate result _would_ be an able container that would be conducive to its tenant's cause.

The end result _should_ be the demise of the foul Uchiha, and the achievement of permanent freedom for the Fox.

A small ember of guilt made itself known to the Kyuubi during its musings, however. It had no idea about what would happen to the boy as a result of his plans. For a brief second, the Fox hoped that nothing would happen that would make the Demon look like a betrayer in the eyes of the boy.

_Hmmm… One way to certify that would be to inform the boy of my unshakeable resolve to gain freedom. Then maybe later on-_

A slight shuffling noise made its way to the Fox's ears, and it shifted its gaze to the outside of its cage, its stream of thought interrupted. The boy was pacing back and forth again.

The Kyuubi's Eyes followed his form, watching and moving like one's eyes would if they were looking at a pendulum.

"**If the ground under your feet was a true surface, it would have worn away by now.**"

The boy stopped, looking upwards with a small smile.

"Hey Fuzzy. I thought you were sleeping," he answered.

It wasn't very noticeable, but something was wrong. The fox knew that the blond was not averse to holding eye-contact; he did so with the air of one challenged. But his head drooped downwards, and he resumed his pacing, though he was slower this time. He started to trip over his own feet as his gait devolved to a shuffle.

Concerned, the Kyuubi raised its head, its expression inquisitive, but the boy did not look up. He spoke instead.

"Something feels wrong, Fuzzy. I can't see straight. It's like there's a bunch of flies swimming around in front of me. And I feel like I'm gonna be sick."

The boy stopped walking, waving a hand in front of his eyes. Then he moaned, grimacing, and he resumed his pacing.

_Sickness? In one's own mindscape?_

"Maybe all the Ramen I've been eating has finally caught up to me, huh?" The boy half-heartedly joked, chuckling.

Abruptly, Naruto stopped walking and looked at the Kyuubi, eyes squinting as if he was glaring into the sun.

And the Kyuubi almost jumped back when the boy's edges began to evaporate.

The Kyuubi watched the boy disintegrate before its eyes, his body melting away into wisps of blue, and the Fox, gripped in urgency, shouted out a final instruction to the boy – "**Check your seal for any differences in its structure!"** – before he vanished completely.

The Kyuubi stared at the spot where the boy had stood in disbelief. All those plans, all those thoughts, all dashed for no discernable reason.

It's present container had the most whacked up mind the Kyuubi had had the misfortune to know.

Moaning dejectedly, the Kyuubi curled up again, looking forward to some long, unproductive years of imprisonment with bleary eyes.

* * *

><p>"No! Forehead, I'm just going to see Choji, and that's it! Stop dragging me!" A piercing voice squealed out.<p>

"Just come on, Pig! It'll only take a second. It's not as if Choji will be awake, anyways, and I really need to know what's going on!" The voice's tormentor had put her figurative foot down.

"But why do I have to do your dirty work?" The victim whined. "Couldn't you just get Hinata to watch his chakra if you're that curious? Why get _me_ to infiltrate _his_ mind? Besides, he's sleeping, or unconscious, or whatever! My jutsu probably won't work!"

"Ughh…" Sakura growled out, frustrated at all the theatrics her friend had to go through. "At least give it a try!" She huffed, giving a particularly vicious tug to the arm she was holding.

Oh, something was going on with Naruto, alright. He'd managed to get even with her for all her punches without having to move! And he'd done it when she was trying to be affectionate! How dare he!

Besides, the fact that a _Sannin_ was covering up for him meant that something fishy was happening, and she intended to get to the bottom of it.

"And besides, can you even imagine Hinata trying to watch him with her _byakugan_ without fainting?"

"Hmm, I guess so," Ino agreed, her index finger rubbing her lip in thought.

"Look, Sakura, I just don't get why you think I can help. Why are you so sure that I might be able to tell you anything about this? My jutsu works by overshadowing a conscious mind. Ok, even if we assume he's conscious, it's possible that his chakra spikes will keep interfering with the jutsu and I'll be forced out anyways. There's so many things I don't know about this…" She muttered, annoyed and fidgety.

"Ino… Just do it, Ok? If you manage to gain control, all you have to do is recall what he's been doing!" Sakura pleaded.

"You do realize that's spying right?"

"Yes. Yes I do."

"Oh, okay, just checking," Ino smiled.

They walked into the ward, completely ignoring the 'Do not enter: Critical condition' sign hanging from the doorknob, and found it devoid of hospital personnel. Again. Ino immediately went over to the side of Naruto's bed, where he still lay, more or less undisturbed from the last time Sakura had seen him.

"He's so different when he isn't screaming around, isn't he?" Ino remarked with a giggle.

Sakura only grumbled, clutching her right wrist with a scowl.

"Wait, I'll just put this basket here… Okay, step back Forehead-girl. This is gonna be _very_ impressive." Ino drawled out in a monotone, her tone laced with sarcasm. Sakura only rolled her eyes and positioned herself behind her friend, ready to catch her when she fell. If she fell.

Holding her hands in her unique hand-seal, Ino performed her jutsu, whispering its name out (Mind-Body Switch Jutsu!).

Five seconds after staying stationary, she released her handseal, puzzled.

"Sorry Sakura, it's not working. It's almost like I'm not targeting anything alive at all. I guess that's what happens when you target sleeping people…"

"Sigh… Well, I guess there's no use in staying now…"

She was walking over to Naruto's side-table to put the rose she'd brought for him on it when Ino saw Naruto's eyelids twitch. Alarmed, she forcefully whispered "Sakura! He's getting up! Run!" and hightailed it out of there, completely lost to the rush of adrenaline. Not that she was scared, the feeling that she was going to be caught pranking someone had overwhelmed her, and the urge to run was irresistible. She kept running quickly in the direction of Chouji's Ward, stepping almost noiselessly, and soon enough she was followed by Sakura.

Both of them were breathless, which was weird considering how much more exerting activities felt like nothing comparably. They stopped against the banister of the stairs, grasping onto the edge. And once they saw each other's faces, they started laughing. Uncontrollably. A nurse passing by wondered why two head-cases were running free from their ward in the psyche department.

"Oh, that was fun." Ino admitted, wiping an imaginary teardrop off of her cheek.

"I know!" Sakura gasped, calming down slowly. "But it's still disappointing, all the same."

"Why don't you ask him what happened now that he's awake?"

Crickets chirped in the background, and Sakura's grin faded away while Ino's turned into a frown.

"You didn't think of it, did you?" Ino asked with a huge sweat-drop behind her head.

Sakura looked completely ready to argue vehemently, but after failing to formulate a single denial, she just hung her head, sighing.

"It's not like I can be sure that Naruto's going to tell me anything. He's been quite secretive lately; I hadn't seen him much since the preliminaries, until he came to 'hug' me a few days ago…" She shuddered, now climbing the stairs that led to wherever Choji's room happened to be. She'd dragged her friend over to her team-mate's ward, it was probably fair if she went along with Ino now.

"Then I'll possess him later when he's walking around! You worry too much, Forehead," Ino reassured, wearing a mischievous grin.

They kept walking onwards, bickering back and forth, their attempted intrusion and narrow escape from Naruto now forgotten as they reveled in the feeling of insulting each other.

On the floor below them, Naruto woke up after a three day long sleep. He blinked, dislodging the accumulated debris in his eyes, and sat up, rubbing his forehead. Opening his eyes blearily, he found himself in a crumbly hospital ward with the sun coming in through some broken blinds on the window.

_Ero-Sennin really came through…_

He was worried he'd find himself in the forest with insects crawling all over him.

Then he looked at his side-table and found his forehead protector, and a single rose flower, still fresh. And looking at the floor in front of it, he saw a basket of fruit with a 'Get well soon!' card in it.

The sight of them made his mouth erupt in a heart-felt smile. People had been visiting him! And they'd left him food too!

He sat back on his bed, grabbing an apple in his hand and munching on it while he twirled the rose between his fingers. Revelling in the plethora of sensations he was now feeling, in the flavour of the apple, in the texture of the rose stalk, in the linen of his bed sheets, he subconsciously compared it to the relative numbness of his mindscape, something he was only able to realize now.

It felt good to be back.

* * *

><p><em>He's late. Again.<em>

He took a kunai from his pouch and started to gouge out random scrawls in the rock, driven to art through boredom.

After a while, he grew tired of the meaningless lines he was starting to etch and he sat on a huge boulder, looking across at the wide and bright view that his vantage point facilitated. He could see trees stretching out on either side of the road to the village in every direction, lit up in a startlingly shiny green and white. The afternoon sun, while blinding for the first few moments, faded after a while and his eyes relaxed enough for him to stop squinting. The beauty moved him, and he thought to himself: _Hnn._

He'd been climbing this small plateau of rock to train with Kakashi everyday, starting from his old room in the Uchiha compound, the place that his Sensei had insisted that he stay in instead of his apartment, and ending up here using nothing but his feet. It was considerably harder to climb a broken and unstable pile of boulders with your feet and your chakra, as he'd noticed, and Kakashi had been adamant that he wasn't going to teach Sasuke anything until he could climb without dislodging a single rock from the cliff.

Nobody needed to know that the first five days of his month of preparation had been wasted.

And once he was ready –according to Kakashi's expectations- the good part had started. The part where you learned jutsu that destroyed boulders and reduced them to rubble. And where you used your dojutsu-eyes to guess what Kakashi was mouthing from beneath his book and his mask. It was harder than it looked, and Sasuke had to rely on the rest of his sensei's facial muscles to divine the truth.

Kakashi said it was to hone his Sharingan, but Sasuke knew that the asshole was only trying to creep him out.

Like, seriously, every single word that Sasuke had seen him utter was from a passage from that damn porn book, and Sasuke could swear that he'd been corrupted beyond recovery by now.

…But it got fun when Sasuke began to follow the plot, so he wasn't really complaining.

He was just a little resentful that his sensei couldn't think of anything more to read to him in the literary department.

He tossed a few rocks into the distance, trying to hit a bird he'd seen on a branch of a tree. It hit the bird, predictably.

It also ricocheted onto the head of a certain grey-haired jounin who'd decided to show up, but Sasuke couldn't see that.

Trees… So unassuming, and yet the memories he now assosciated with them were hardly benign. The forest of death was probably going to leave him scarred for eternity. The first time his eyes had been opened to the fact that the world held so much power that seemed out of his grasp was not a pleasant experience.

And to think that Naruto, the person he'd reserved a portion of his all-encompassing scorn to, had managed to turn his own taunt back at him was especially insulting.

_Naruto…_

Sasuke couldn't make up his mind about him. Should he feel intimidated by the way he'd improved? Relieved that the blond wasn't a liability anymore? …Annoyed that the blonde wasn't a liability anymore?

Proud? Proud of his team-mate that he managed to find his strength at the time when everyone needed it?

_Proud. Just like I was proud of Itachi…_

Sasuke immediately shut his thoughts down, closing his eyes and turning his face away from the sun. He would never think of anyone with pride. Everyone could be a betrayer. Everyone could end up returning the emotion with a knife in his back.

That was why he was sworn to avenge his brother, wasn't he?

There would be only one traitor, only one murderer, and only one avenger.

Everyone else was either a step on his path to Itachi's death, or a stone that had to be removed.

_Great, now I'm thinking about _that_ again…_

The dark thoughts that Sasuke had more or less managed to repress during the years following the massacre were now returning with increasing frequency, and with increasing intensity. It had unnerved Sasuke, and had pushed him to train faster and harder. If this was what a slight defeat in a forest was going to do to his mind, he had to find some form of self-assurance, and right now, his self-assurance was in the form of mastering the Chidori.

If he could manage to perform the technique more than twice a day, he'd feel confident that his strength had increased by a measureable amount.

Then maybe, just maybe, he'd be able to beat Gaara and his sand.

Thinking of the red-haired boy chilled Sasuke to the core.

And he'd thought _he_ was messed up. Gaara made him look like a psychologist in comparison.

Sasuke remembered the day the red-haired psycho had been spying on his training with his 'third eye' and the way that Kakashi had placated him (You can kill Sasuke later). Weirdly enough, the madman had left.

Although Gaara was strong to an extent that was scary, Sasuke knew that he was probably nothing compared to Itachi, and if Sasuke wasn't able to defeat the sand-nin, he might as well give up on his dream to avenge his clan.

And that was the whole reason for his training, wasn't it?

Breathing deeply and letting his lungs empty themselves, he glanced to his hand and found that he'd been drawing with his kunai again. And the top of his knife had been chipped off.

He discarded it, throwing it over his shoulder, and it soared down the edge of the plateau.

Once again hitting the same grey-haired jounin on his head, who was left wondering at the way all objects that weren't thrown with killing intent ended up on his skull.

Yawning, Sasuke saw the first hints of orange permeate the sky, and he realized that twilight was fast approaching. Grumbling about his lazy-ass Sensei, he made his way down the outcropping of rock, planning to train on his own at the clan compound. It was the last day before the final part of the Chunin-exams, and he needed to make sure that he was up to par according to his _own_ standards too.

Fortunately, he chose to descend from the 'other' side of the mountain-hill-plateau-outcropping-thing, and he didn't cross paths with his sensei, who reached the top mere seconds after Sasuke had left.

Kakashi was quite irked when he got there. He'd cut his procrastination time by such a significant portion, and his student just decided to bail on him? He was going to make sure that Sasuke was driven extra hard right before the exam, even if that meant that he would be late for his match. Maybe his broody student should experience the joy of making others wait for once, he thought, smirking.

* * *

><p><strong>... No. No SasukeSakura/Kakashi/Jiraiya/Anyone bashing. Grr.**

**X.x**


	5. Nerves

**If it's Fanfiction that we're posting, why would it need a disclaimer?  
>I guess it looks cool.<strong>

**...**

**And yes, thanks for the reviews, everyone.**

* * *

><p>"Eh… It doesn't <em>look<em> any different."

Looking at his seal in the bathroom mirror with his shirt tucked under his chin, Naruto wondered what the Kyuubi had been so worried about. The scrawls around his belly button still looked just like that; scrawls.

_Meh, stupid fox._

He was relieved to be away from the Demon's company, but he felt a slight twinge of sadness. Just when they were starting to get along…

But if Naruto had to choose between staying with the fox and living in the real world, he would definitely do anything to get away from his mindscape.

He let his shirt drop back onto his stomach, leaving the room and flopping down onto his hospital bed for a brief moment. He sighed, hunching lower.

Who knew that out of all the things that could happen in a hospital, getting a friend almost murdered by a crazy Sand-nin was one of them?

With a shuddering huff, Naruto realized just how lucky Lee was to have him, Shikamaru and Ino nearby earlier today.

After Naruto had woken up, Shikamaru had come by, Shougi board under his arm, and he had started a game with Naruto; surprising since he hadn't gone to Chouji's room first (Ino's still sitting there… Baah. Troublesome).

And halfway through, the blond kunoichi had wandered into their company, demanding her fruit basket back. It had been a crushing blow to Naruto to learn that _that_ gift wasn't for him, but the rose comforted him; especially when Ino told him that Sakura had left it there herself before leaving the hospital a while ago.

Then Ino had picked up Shikamaru's Game-board, much to his chagrin, saying that he needed to visit his 'best' friend and that he could continue his game there, and Naruto had followed on the Nara's grunt of invitation.

Chouji had been quite happy to see Naruto. Almost as happy as he was when he saw the fruit basket. Naruto felt honoured, naturally.

Then while Naruto got decimated in his game, the four of them had made small talk, joking around and talking like a bunch of good friends. Naruto had felt overjoyed at the little moment he was sharing.

They all had a lot of individuality that they kept expressing; Shikamaru with his sighs, Ino with her playful and caustic remarks, Chouji with the good-natured chit-chat that he managed to slip out between his bites of various fruit, and Naruto with his periodic exclamations of frustration when Shikamaru managed to unleash a particularly devastating and 'troublesome' strategy.

What were they talking about? Oh. Their clothes. Ino's favourite topic, but one that Shikamaru and Chouji were highly opinionated about too, surprisingly. Naruto got annoyed when his ensemble got picked on though.

Then things came to a lull when Chouji, already bloated from his indigestion, felt too full to stay awake and started snoring. So they packed up and left, ready to go to their homes.

But as soon as they had gone a few paces away, a surge of killing intent left them breathless. They turned into a room to find the source; the red-haired kid from the Sand village.

Ino had nearly screamed when she saw his hand hovering over Lee's head, Sand creeping around the Leaf-nin's entire bed. But Shikamaru's quick thinking saved the bedridden Genin. His Shadow Possession Jutsu managed to restrict the attacker's hand, and he appeared to be unable to direct his sand to crush Lee.

Ino and Naruto had stood behind the shadow manipulator, frozen in shock and anger. Naruto was all for rushing in and breaking the psycho's face off, and Ino seconded that opinion, drawing out a shuriken, but Shikamaru, being himself, knew that they shouldn't be allowed to kill themselves and had stopped them.

Then everything went wrong when Ino thought it was a good idea to use her Mind Body Switch Jutsu.

She started to literally foam at the lips, trembling in her near-unconscious body, while Gaara stood as if nothing had happened to him, angered and snarling while repeating his 'Get out of my way or I'll kill you' catch-phrase.

Then he had moved on to telling his life story on a prompt from Naruto, and the container of the Kyuubi went catatonic after hearing of the Red-head's Jinchuriki status and his life story.

Naruto, who always told people to 'believe it', still found it hard to believe. Someone so similar, and yet so different. Someone who could very well be an Image of what Naruto would have been if things were more horrible than they were. He had been shocked out of his reverie by the sight of a torrent of Sand rushing towards him.

Then Gai had come to their rescue before Gaara could actually kill them. Naruto was never happier to see the jounin; the happiness was compounded when Ino jerked awake, jumping straight into Naruto's shaking arms.

Not that he'd managed to live it down. What was it with girls and him getting punched, anyways?

* * *

><p>A series of clacks made their way to Naruto's ears; the sound of Jiraiya's sandals preceded him.<p>

And a few moments later, the toad Sannin made his way into the otherwise empty room.

"Ero-sennin!" Naruto chirped, happy to see his sensei.

Then, thinking back on it, he realized that he should be mad at the pervert for tossing him off the cliff. Well, he _shoul_d be. But he couldn't muster up the energy.

He settled for pouting instead.

"Hey guess what!" he exclaimed.

"I actually summoned the boss toad! It really worked! …But did you _have_ to throw me off that stupid cliff?" Naruto complained, fidgeting with his forehead protector.

"Well, I-"

"It doesn't matter now. Ino and the rest of her team just invited me to go with them to the festival this evening!"

"Oh really? That's great but I-"

"I know! It's gonna be awesome! It'll be the first time I'll go to a place like that!"

"You can go later, I just had to-"

"Okay! See ya, Ero-sennin!"

And Naruto ran out the door, leaving Jiraiya to lamely mumble: "-ask you about… never mind."

He sighed dejectedly, leaving the troublesome task for later. Naruto wasn't going anywhere; he could always be questioned about what happened to him. He had a festival full of research material to go to too, anyways. But still, it wasn't good to leave things unhandled.

* * *

><p>Naruto had intended to have fun at the festival; he actually went there and met up with team 10, but he left an hour later to go to Ichiraku's. His nerves were acting up, and he knew that the only thing that could soothe his stomach would be a hot bowl of steaming Ramen, filled with wholesome meaty goodness.<p>

Besides, he could barely stand the crowd. Chattering and bustling about, they reminded him of bitter feelings and worse times, times when nothing ever went right. His encounter with Gaara had made him feel even more sensitive, and although no-one looked at him, although no-one said anything to him, he could feel their edginess as he went against the flow of people, looking up at the evening stars.

As he waited at Ichiraku's for the Chef to direct his attentions to him, Naruto sat on a stool, breathing in the meat-flavoured and steamy air. He was spacing out, imagining scenarios of his fight with Neji going wrong and him getting embarrassed in front of the entire village and failing his vow to win for Hinata, when Teuchi called out to someone behind him.

"Hey there! You seem interested. How about trying a bowl of our house special?"

A shrill 'meep!' came from the general direction. A very familiar 'meep'.

Turning back, Naruto saw a shadowy figure trying to tiptoe away. A very familiar shadowy figure…

Well, think of the heiress and the heiress arrives.

* * *

><p>And she had been caught. Finally.<p>

She had always known that this day was going to come, the day of reckoning, when either she'd be told to stop following him, or… She couldn't think of an alternative.

She had seen him look extremely nervous at the festival, smiling sadly every once in a while and acting fairly nauseous. Ino had been telling him about something, something that sounded like a torture session she had undergone in the mind of a certain 'Psycho', and Naruto looked even more spooked than he had before.

And so she had snuck away from the rest of her team to follow him, trying to find a way to comfort him.

She hadn't found anything, obviously. She'd been found instead.

She could feel herself go completely haywire from where she'd frozen up on the sidewalk after Naruto had called out to her.

How was she supposed to soothe someone else's nerves when she herself felt the need to hyperventilate?

She made her way over to the small shop though, eyes downcast, fingers already moving in their little calming motions.

"Naruto. Why are you here?" She asked, pulling a stool and setting herself down.

"This is where I usually eat at," he said while staring fixedly at the counter. "Were you at the festival?"

"Uh, Y-yes. My team wanted to go… Especially Kiba." The Inuzuka had been trying to coax Shino into loosening up before his match the next day, but Shino was proving to be rather hard to crack out of his exoskeleton of blankness. Hinata had left them both while they were fighting to go opposite ways, Kiba dragging Shino into a Tavern, Shino trying to escape onto the rooftops.

Sighing, she interlocked her fingers, trying to stifle a yawn. She was a little sleepy, and the pinpricks of pain she felt with every breath were starting to annoy her.

"Say Hinata…" Naruto began, and Hinata almost laughed when she saw the way his hands were fidgeting where they rested on the wooden tabletop. She waited for him to finish his sentence.

The chef brought Naruto his order, but the bowl remained untouched, its large and meaty contents swirling within tantalizingly.

Naruto finally managed to voice what was worrying him.

"Hinata… What if I lose tomorrow?"

This was so unexpected coming from Naruto that Hinata was left to wonder if the ninja next to him was Naruto at all.

Naruto? Afraid? Of losing?

Naruto was the Anti-thesis of a coward, he was the one who could face any hurdle, any difficulty, and still get back up, stand tall and proclaim that he was still going to be the Hokage, and nothing would ever stop him.

It was what defined him in her eyes. It was what made him Naruto.

To see that part of him taken away from him, even for a moment, made Hinata feel like her Universe had been flipped over.

"N-naruto, Of cou-"

"I mean, Neji is… really strong. Lee said that he's probably the strongest Genin in the whole village! Do I really have a chance against him?"

Hinata had no answer to that though. She knew just how strong Neji was; he was strong enough to face her father himself for a significant amount of time before being overwhelmed. That made him stronger than more than half of the ninja in her entire clan.

But if there was one thing she knew, it was that Naruto might not win, but he wouldn't lose.

"You can still win, Naruto. He might be strong, but h-he's not invincible."

Naruto's expression instantly twisted into a grin that seemed more like a grimace. He laughed, twisting his expression further.

"I know! And besides, I'm pretty strong too!"

His laugh slowly dwindled away, and his funk settled back. Hinata's eyes sank down further. This wasn't how things were supposed to happen. Naruto was supposed to boisterously assure her of his victory; then he was supposed to make castles in the air, dreaming of things that he would do once he was a chunin.

Maybe tell her that he would spend some time with her later on, because he liked people like her.

"Naruto… Do y-you remember my fight with Neji?"

Naruto's hands tightened.

"I was loosing… And I had given up, but then I- I heard you cheering for me. And I remembered the way you always got up when you fell, and never gave up… and It gave me the strength to face Neji again."

She started coughing, and pain filled her torso; she silenced herself and ploughed on.

"It just fills me with such admiration when I see you… And I that's why I believe you'll win. You just don't know what it means to lose."

Naruto had been listening raptly, and he snorted out a strangled laugh.

"You really think so, Hinata?" He mumbled wryly.

Crestfallen, Hinata pursed her lips. It looked like her little inspirational speech had failed. She looked at him pensively, thinking of something else to do.

"Hinata…" Naruto awkwardly began again, and Hinata threw her rampant thoughts away, focusing on his words.

"I may act like I'm strong, but all I really do is say things. I mean, I had a month to train, and I was only able to learn one technique. And I'm still having problems with it."

He began to worry his lower lip with his teeth.

"I've only ever messed up, and I was lucky so many times- Maybe Neji's right. Maybe I'm doomed to be a failure."

"No Naruto!" Hinata gasped.

Hinata was momentarily shocked at her vehemence and audacity.

"Neji isn't right. He never is, Naruto. He only sees in black and white; he thinks that we're all failures. But he forgets that we are _proud_ failures. And you're the best of us all."

Naruto's eyes widened and his shoulders tensed. He looked around at Hinata, his gaze piercing, his eyes sad, but they were slowly creasing into a smile.

"And that's why Neji can't defeat you. You'll find a way to beat him, no matter how many times you have to get back up to do it."

"Believe it!" Naruto added in for her, laughing with true happiness now.

They chuckled a little, both enheartened. She sighed with relief, knowing that she had helped Naruto, even if it was only in regaining his spirits.

"Thank you Hinata. I really needed that," he said with a heartfelt smile.

Hinata didn't say anything though. Her adrenaline had receded; she seemed to be liplocked again.

"You really should try some, you know," he offered, pointing to the ramen bowl he had started to attack.

Abruptly a fit of coughing assailed her; the pain was worse than before. She suddenly had an overwhelming desire to drink something.

Her condition had taken a turn for a worse. She realized that she shouldn't have talked so much, her delicate condition was already being strained by her coming to the festival.

Hastily getting up, she muttered an apology to Naruto and left him with his bowl in his hand, chopsticks outstretched towards her. She walked away hastily.

Looking back once, she saw Naruto looking confused, but then he waved to her, shouting: "I'll see you at the arena! Thanks again!"

* * *

><p>Once back home, Naruto settled in for a good night's sleep. All his concerns and fears seemed meaningless now, and he pulled his nightcap on and lay down, the day catching up with him. Before he drifted off into a thoughtless slumber, black-ringed eyes and a mop of red hair came into his mind's eye. He shuddered, dispelling the nightmare.<p>

Then, for a few brief seconds, he wondered why he couldn't feel his bed beneath him. Or why his blankets weren't over him. Or why his Night-suit wasn't on him. Or why the floor beneath him was under his _feet_. Or why he was wearing his Ninja suit in all its orange Glory.

Or why there was a huge fox in front of him behind a huge prison door, which had jumped up, looking at him with widened crimson eyes, before slumping down again.

"**You came back… Brat.**"

Oh, right. He was back in the sewer.

Wait a second.

_I'm back in that sewer!_

Naruto jumped in shock, eyes tearing up, throat constricting.

"NO! Not again!" He whined, jumping up and down and stomping his feet in frustration. "My fight's gonna start tomorrow, damn it!"

The damned fox just looked on, amused.

"**I see you're happy to see me,**" it taunted in a particularly vicious tone.

"Go to hell, Fuzzball."

* * *

><p><strong>...<strong>

**X.x**


	6. Onwards

**This took a while.**

**Anywho, thanks for all the reviews. I couldn't reply to them, but they are appreciated all the same.**

**...**

* * *

><p>The brat was being difficult. Instead of being humble and accepting that an entity such as the <em>fox<em> was talking to the little whelp, he was sitting with his back to the Kyuubi, resolutely looking away with his arms and legs crossed.

"**You are not accomplishing anything, you idiot.**"

"Hmmph," Naruto grunted.

"**I thought you said talking was important.**"

He grumbled, fidgeting with his crossed arms.

Vapors of steam seemed to be forming over his head.

But sadly for the blond nuisance, the Kyuubi didn't do placating.

Annoyed, the fox streamed a wave of chakra through the cage bars, aiming for the boy. The wave silently traveled and condensed into tendrils a foot away from the blonde's back. They lifted themselves off the floor, spread out until they were aiming in different directions, like two hands stretching their fingers out, and enveloped him before the sulker could turn his head back and notice.

Much like the first time the brat had been _given_ his first taste of Demonic Chakra.

But the fox had no intentions of letting Naruto keep any of the energy.

The chakra that had now gripped him shook him around, but the boy resolutely stayed motionless.

The fox's frustration with ungrateful little thing reached its limit. He growled, killing intent leaking into the air. The chakra, responding to its owner's anger, began twisting and churning until it looked like the boy's torso was captured in a frothy cloak of orange juice. He tried to stoically deny its presence, but he soon caved in.

He whined pathetically at the Kyuubi, telling it to let him go.

He chuckled helplessly, mewling in agony.

He became reduced to outright laughter, tears streaming down his reddened cheeks, eyes squinted shut, limbs flailing.

"Stop! It- It tickles!" He shouted.

_Tickles?_

What was that supposed to mean?

The fox kept up with the assault, the blonde's pleas for freedom ignored to better understand what was driving him to such behaviour.

"PLEASE!" He yelled between guffaws. "I'm begging you! Lemme go already!"

"**Begging for mercy, hmm?**" the fox said, suitably mollified.

The fox pulled back the chakra, its pride assuaged by the humble attitude it had finally dragged from the boy. The brat seemed more open to conversation too now. He was rolling on the floor, panting weekly and cursing the fox to the worst deaths he could imagine.

Waiting for the boy to recover, the fox observed his breathlessness, his apparent weakness and the immobility that he had been reduced to by some simple superficial stimulation.

"**Humans must be weak if **_**that**_** is all it takes to defeat them**," the fox mused.

If only it had known of this gaping weakness that humanity shared, it could have made its captor botch that evil sealing technique, among many things.

"I- You… Owwww…" the boy was still incoherent, and an occasional chuckle escaped from him amidst his shallow gasps.

He rose up from the ground a few moments later, shuffling closer to the cage with shaky steps.

"Did you really have to do that?" he splurted out.

The fox just glared pointedly at the breathless human.

"I would have talked to you soon anyways. You should know, of all people."

"**Sure,**" the fox said dismissively, as if the boy's words were of no importance, or it really didn't believe them.

It ignored the dark cloud that had just formed above the creature's head. It just stared back at him, inquisitive and demanding an answer.

"It's just that- I have this battle tomorrow. It's really important, and I have to be there. Last time I was stuck here, I woke up three days later. I can't afford that kind of delay now!" The child was distraught. But the Kyuubi was fixated on the more important parts of the conversation.

The boy was going to fight a battle. Keyword: Going to.

This was something that hadn't happened yet, something the Fox could actually influence.

It was as if it had another chance to live in the world outside; albeit in a very indirect way.

It considered trying to give him a way to help himself. Maybe tell him about some of the Jutsu it had learned during its sojourn as a free Bijuu. Maybe some of the widely destructive ones it had witnessed during its attack of Konoha.

…But the fox decided against it. It would see what he did on his own. It would give the Kyuubi a chance to try out one of the experiments it had been thinking about, too.

"**Do you know anything about your enemy?**" The fox pried, genuinely curious.

"Neji? Of course I do! He's a smartass bastard who looks down on everyone and nearly killed his own cousin just because she wouldn't take the trash he was calling her! I swore to beat him, and believe it, I will!" the boy exclaimed, fist clenched in front of his face and a dangerous gleam in his eyes.

"…**As interesting as your issues with this person might be, that is not what I wanted to know. What do you **_**know**_** about this opponent? His… power?**"

"Oh," the blond scratched his head in thought.

"He's a taijutsu user. He uses this weird style called the gentle fist which blocks your chakra and makes you go numb. It also does a lot of damage to your insides," he elaborated. He covered his chest with his hand, looking sick.

The fox mildly hummed in thought, trying to think of how this particular fighting style would work. The sound was a low and steady vibration that, to the boy, would have sounded more like a growl.

As far as the demon could see, it would have to block the chakra passages of those foolish human bodies by injecting foreign chakra into them at the nodes, the places where chakra blockages would ensure maximum disruption of the normal flow of the volatile energy.

It would not be a pleasant experience for the boy if he got his chakra flow impeded. It would be especially dangerous because it might end up blocking the nodes from which the Fox's chakra seeped into the boy's own.

Not that the fox knew that it was possible. It was just a theory.

But still, if that happened, the Kyuubi could probably kiss its own plans goodbye. Better to stay safe with hopes of freedom rather than sorry with indefinite imprisonment.

How would its container handle the fight then?

"**Have you thought of your course of action for the battle?**" The fox asked, deciding to take the direct approach and ask him bluntly.

"My plans?" The boy confirmed.

"It's simple. Wipe the floor with that bastard, and get him to say sorry for what he did to Hinata!" he blurted out without a second thought, mashing his knuckles into his hand in anticipated violence.

The Kyuubi just shook his head, giving out the equivalent of a sigh by drooping its ears and closing its eyes. The boy giggled slightly, probably at the fox, and the Demon's resentment and bitterness intensified.

It wondered, for probably the millionth time, why it had to be stuck with a container like _this_.

_Sure, everyone else gets the cool ones, but me? I get a complete knucklehead._

"**I'm asking about exactly **_**how**_** you will do that.**"

"Oh." He paused for a moment to think, looking poised and thoughtful.

"Of course! I know, since he's a taijutsu user, I'll just summon my clones and we'll rush him! He won't know which one of us is the real one, and since he'll have to go through all of my clones, he'll be too tired to put up a good fight and I'll finish him off!" He chuckled evilly, already contemplating his victory.

"**How many clones can you summon at a time?**"

"Oh not much, just a couple hundred," the brat said in feigned modesty.

"**How long do they last under assault?"**

The boy's obviously staged nonchalance turned into sheepishness. "Doesn't take much to pop them, just a few hits," he said. "So a couple of seconds, I guess."

"**So you'll have used up all your clones in a matter of minutes, and you'll have used too much of your chakra to put up a good fight when the time comes to battle him. Not good enough, brat.**"

"Not if we all fight him together…" the boy muttered unsurely.

The fox actually thought the solution was viable enough to work; the boy's chakra was limitless, thanks to the demon, and a clone would put up a fight for longer than a few seconds if it had any evasion skill.

But it had its weaknesses. If the boy could come up with anything better, now was the time to see it.

"Ok… Maybe I'll summon a few toads to help me. They'll put up a good fight with Neji, and I think their skin should be tough enough to last under his attacks, which are supposed to work on people only… at least I think they are."

_Toads?_

"**What do you mean, summon toads?**"

"I signed a Summon contract with Toads, believe it! I even summoned the Toad Boss! That's why I asked you for your chakra that other day…"

A brief image of a blonde speck astride a mountain sized toad amidst a mass of chaos assaulted the Fox's mind. Then the fox tried to see _this _blond speck astride the same mountain sized toad, demanding it to fight for him.

It failed to visualize it.

But if the boy was right, toads might actually let him win. The boy could use those slimy beasts to pin the enemy down, then finish him off, it thought.

"**That may work…**" the fox said grudgingly.

"Hmm…" The boy appeared to be thinking.

"I'll ask Hinata about anything else I should look out for before the fight," the brat said speculatively.

"But I think I'm good for now," he finished, looking up with a smile.

"**Regardless… Before the fight starts, I want you to draw on my chakra. Fill your system with it. It'll help with your summons…**"

…_And it'll help me with finding out just what is happening with my seal_, it finished to itself.

_Speaking of seals…_

"**Did you do what I told you to?**"

"Huh? What was it?"

"**…Check your seal for changes?**"

"Yes I did, and it was just the same! I dunno what you're so scared about-"

The boy's eyes went languid, and he instantly sank down onto the floor, arms splayed across his crossed legs.

"-but whatever it is, All you need to solve it is RAMEN!"

"…**What?**"

"That's right, just RAMEN, you fuzzy little-"

The fox plugged its ears with two of its tails before it could hear anymore of the boy's nonsensical ramblings.

_No differences at all?_

He'd have to prod the boy into giving more details than that when he was conscious again.

_Regardless, all will be revealed when he summons my chakra_, the Fox thought with the first glimmers of excitement it had felt in a very long time. It had always known that its chakra could affect the minds of its hosts when drawn upon. Now it would see just how far the influence could be stretched.

* * *

><p>Naruto woke up, early and yet refreshed.<p>

A dread feeling filled him when he looked at the calendar.

But he grinned.

And just like that, he forgot any misgivings he might have had.

He jumped out of bed, and took his time making himself the largest Ramen Breakfast he had ever made himself.

He let the empty cups of instant ramen stay on the table, and he rushed into the bathroom to take the longest shower he had ever taken.

Nothing less would suffice for the great battle coming up, after all.

He came out and took longer than he had ever taken to pick out a jumpsuit from the many identical orange jumpsuits that he had.

He seemed to have forgotten which one was his 'lucky' one.

By the time he was dressed, had his ninja gear sorted through and equipped, and had his forehead protector tied up, he still had a whole half-hour left to get to the arena.

Seeing no use in just staying at home, he left.

The day was bright and windy.

It seemed to scream to Naruto that he was going to WIN.

His grin widened and he ran towards the arena, eager to get there, not seeing a small brown-haired boy with a helmet who was waiting nearby who shouted out in indignation at being ignored and ran off after his boss.

He dashed onwards while Sasuke was sneaking off along the rooftops, not noticing that either.

Hinata hid behind a wall when she saw him, but she stayed with her family. She and the 'important' people of her clan were accompanying Neji till the stadium, where Hinata had agreed to meet Kiba. It wouldn't do for her to be seen talking to his opponent.

In time, the blond knucklehead reached the arena. He met Sakura outside the doors with Ino, and they gave him their versions of 'good luck', Ino by punching his shoulder and saying that he'd better win, and Sakura by actually saying "Good luck, Naruto."

He grinned and blew it off, saying that of course he was going to win, believe it.

The only contestants that were waiting when he went inside were Gaara and the other sand-nin. Shikamaru was there too, but he was sitting up in a tree. Naruto went over to him and tried to spark a conversation, but the Nara was feeling extra lazy today.

Uncharacteristically so.

Apparently, Ino had dragged him over early to make sure that she got here in time to see Sasuke make his entrance. Shikamaru had been sleeping before that.

Naruto searched the Audience for other people he might know. All he saw was villagers pouring in through the many doors, but there was no sign of any known face. Bored, he just sat down next to Shikamaru on the branch.

In time, Neji came to the centre of the Arena, eyes fixed straight in front of him. Naruto saw Sakura take a seat next to Ino, and his roving eyes caught Hinata sitting next to Kiba. She seemed overly frail, to an extent that it almost hurt to look at her.

He thought of going over to ask her about a few of Neji's techniques; he had no doubt that she would tell him, she was really helpful that way. But her family, seated nearby, looked forbidding. He didn't want to run into any trouble with them. Not now anyways.

_I guess I'll just have to wing it… Although…_

If the Kyuubi was to be relied on, its chakra, which would be tapped into in the beginning of the fight, would be enough to summon the toad boss again.

It seemed slightly overkill though. And besides, the oversized frog might have decided that a silly exam fight was not worth his time.

The proctor, a guy with a senbon needle in his teeth, called out to the two leaf-nin from the tree, gesturing with his hand for them to come and stand behind him.

Everyone else had arrived by then. Everyone except Sasuke.

* * *

><p>Noon had brought with it a nasty bout of last minute training from a sensei that was proving to be the single most annoying person he had ever known. Even more so than Naruto.<p>

Kakashi had insisted on it. He had said that it was extremely vital. He kept hinting that without it there would be a very good chance that he could lose his match. He made sure that the point got across, although the question remained about what he had been doing for the past month if the truly important part of his training had to start on the last day.

And when he had been told about what he was supposed to do, he'd said: "Is this a joke?"

All he had to do was run DOWN the same stupid cliff now. As fast as he can. And not collapse or slow down when he touched the ground. It looked hard, but he mastered it soon enough.

It was fun. But it was still useless. What was he supposed to do with running down a cliff? The speed boost wasn't all that significant compared to what he could achieve by running another 15 steps forward.

Sasuke went along with it though.

He climbed up. He ran down. He listened to Kakashi's lazy ranting about what was wrong with his running posture, or chakra cling, or something else. Then he did it all over again.

A few minutes later, the Uchiha got the feeling that he was running a little late. And then, thankfully, Kakashi got up from the rock he was sitting on and stowed his book away.

"Now you'll see what this was really for," he drawled ominously.

He took for a running break against the cliff-side, scaling up until he reached the top. Then in a smooth turn, he reversed direction, placing his hands together and forming a lightning blade in them even as he hurtled to the ground at breakneck speeds.

The technique cut a large groove through the hill. Then he reached the ground and fluidly pushed himself off the vertical surface, speeding towards a boulder the size of the memorial stone. He thrust his Chidori into it.

It splintered into pieces, broke apart and started to smoke, while Kakashi stood there, shoulders heaving slightly.

He turned around and saw Sasuke staring at him with the same unimpressed eyes.

"In the arena, there won't be enough space to gain a running start powerful enough to do the maximum damage a Chidori can do. However, the walls are high enough to be suitable springboards. Run down them, and you can form a thrust powerful enough to pierce Gaara's Ultimate Defense," Kakashi explained, crossing his arms with his eye half closed, looking completely care-free.

Sasuke just nodded, a little understanding showing on his face.

"Activate your Sharingan and observe once again. I won't use my Chidori, but you should be able to copy the exact force needed to push off the wall for someone of my weight without any loss of speed. Then you'll be able to figure out your own optimum force yourself."

* * *

><p>It was picturesque, to say the least.<p>

Escort upon escort of distinguished individuals came to the Arena, each decked out with overflowing extravagance. Their carts were lavish, and so were the oxen that drew them.

Their arrival seemed to be an unworded signal; once at least fifteen of them had come, the hokage rose up and signaled the beginning of the third part of the Chunin exam to a burst of cheering from eager spectators.

It was time to bring it on, as Naruto would have said.

The arena seats were full to the brim. Some people were sitting on the stairs, not counting the ANBU that were prowling around, mostly unnoticed, but detected by a few individuals like Kiba and Shino.

Ninja sat wherever they wanted to, mingling in with the villagers or with their own peers. The villagers, on the other hand, preferred to take seats next to groups of two or more ninja, probably because of the valuable insights and explanations they were prone to burst into. It helped the civilians understand what they couldn't in a fight.

The Genin of Konoha that hadn't made it to this part of the exam were not seated in any form of a group. Ino had left Chouji with his father, and then she had ditched her own to go sit with Sakura. The two of them were somewhere in the lowest row of seats, and had the best vantage point possible.

Kiba was next to Hinata, and the two of them were sitting near her father and her little sister. She hadn't managed to find a place further away before the Hyuuga head had started staring at her, and she had complied to his unspoken order, although not completely.

Everyone was now leaning forward in their seats, eager to let the action begin.

Ninja were eying Neji and Naruto carefully, looking for any sign of pre-battle jitters.

The Arena spectators quieted down when the proctor turned towards the contestants and showed them all a piece of paper. Then he announced the contestants of the first match, requesting everyone else to leave.

People muttered about the absence of the Uchiha heir; some civilians even considered leaving after watching the Hyuuga prodigy if he wasn't going to be there for them to see what all the fuss about him was all about.

* * *

><p>Naruto stepped up to face against Neji. And before the proctor even announced their match to have begun, both of them took their stances.<p>

At least Neji did.

Naruto just stood there, and he slowly lifted a clenched fist to his eye level, aiming it towards Neji. He trembled lightly, his arm and his face twitching in emotion.

"Are you going to say something heroic?" Neji taunted.

Naruto repeated his promise to him. A promise to win.

Neji smirked. His eyes became venous and textured, his bloodline having activated while he shifted his foot behind him, and his hand in front.

"Your vow will remain unkept, I'm afraid. You cannot win," he said, even as he saw and felt the determination in his opponent.

Naruto smirked too, the look so out-of-place when he was about to fight someone so much stronger than him that even the proctor, who shouldn't have been biased, raised an eyebrow, his ever-moving tooth-senbon motionless.

The wind began to pick up around them, sending leaves and dust flying.

The proctor announced that the first match had begun, even as Red tendrils of chakra began manifesting around Naruto's body.

* * *

><p><strong>...<strong>

**The next should come sooner. No promises though.**

**-.=**


	7. In the eyes of the beholder

**...**

**Well, here it is.**

* * *

><p><em>Finally.<em>

The Nine-tailed Demon Fox could finally _feel_.

_Chakra is the being. Chakra is the consciousness. Chakra is the soul, _he thought gleefully.

Prior to this, chakra was only fuel that could be provided to the boy. But apparently, the seal had changed enough to allow everything to happen as it did.

The Kyuubi, now, _was_ its chakra.

The boy had called for it. And so, the boy had called for the Nine-tailed fox itself.

The beating of a heart, in all its adrenaline-flooded glory, was extremely welcoming to feel.

Instantly, the fox was overwhelmed by the urge to break free.

_Patience…_ It told itself.

_The seal might kill me yet…_

But to do what the fox wanted to do, the red chakra had to get to the boy's head. If the fox could reach there, success for him was assured.

In the meantime, the fox just reveled in the sensation of another body, a body that could be felt even as it knew it was lying down in the middle of a cage.

In and out. The Demon was both in and out of the seal. The seal, for all it was intended to do, had failed.

Then he felt the piece-de-resistance of sensation.

Touch.

The wind around unfamiliar arms, around legs that were moving, pumping with full abandon, felt like a long-lost dream. Even the pain that came occasionally was welcoming, so refreshing was it all.

_I must reach his mind!_ The fox cried out to nothing.

Slowly, it made the chakra seep upwards and outwards.

The flow of chakra should have been much faster, the fox realized.

_What is that brat doing?_

After a few futile tries of letting the chakra simply seep along the boy's pathways, it realized that the passages had been blocked.

The fox cursed the boy's ineptitude. Once again, it was up to the bijuu to save its wayward container.

It rushed the node with its chakra, decimating the blockage and the foreign chakra in one burst.

It did so to any such impediments it encountered.

And then the path to the boy's mind lay open.

Jubilant, the fox made its way into every crevice that it could reach.

And then the Fox could see.

It could SEE.

If happiness was what the fox had felt when it had discovered its relative leeway, what it was feeling now was beyond the descriptive limits of the word.

The chakra roiled wherever it had manifested, quickening in its possessors' euphoria.

And the first sight that greeted the fox was the triumphant and now slightly puzzled face of another human boy. With the sky as the background.

It received a little more feedback from its host's senses, and it determined the problem.

The brat was lying on the ground. And he couldn't move.

The black-haired boy raised a fist, about to plunge it downwards.

_What in the world had happened?_

* * *

><p><em>Oh gods, how had it come to this?<em>

_Neji was winning!_

_And he was going to throw down the killing blow!_

_No… Can't watch…_

A gasp of pain and the sound of someone skidding away from me on the dirt came to my ears.

I hesitantly opened my eyes, hoping beyond hope for some kind of miracle.

And what a miracle it was to see Neji looking at me, deep-set loathing in his eyes and his arm dangling awkwardly to the side while he cradled it with his other hand.

And what a miracle it was to feel strength pouring through me, to feel all the pain and fatigue waste away.

I felt all my fear evaporate. I felt all my confidence rushing back in. But this time there was something much more than the simple hope of winning I had before the fight, or the smug realization I had with the knowledge of having a secret weapon that even the Fourth Hokage had trouble to subdue.

I felt a twitch in the back of my mind. Some kind of urge to attack, to make haste with the fight proceeding as it was.

Not bothering to think about it, I went in for the kill.

I was putting more into the fight than what I should have, I realized belatedly. But it all felt good, for some reason I couldn't think of.

I made the Hand-sign for my shadow clone jutsu. I felt a deep satisfaction echoing through me at the twitter of the forming clones.

And now, with a renewed army assembled, I had the advantage.

Some clones branched out to help the fallen Toads that I had managed to summon.

Hmm… The toads were a rather difficult thing to explain.

* * *

><p><em>Right after the match started<em>

I was confused about the right amount of chakra to throw into the summoning jutsu to get the proper size and number of the toads I wanted, so I channeled the technique like I would with my shadow clone jutsu; throw in a cartload of Chakra and visualize an arbitrary number of clones.

I got an arbitrary number of toads, all right.

What I didn't get was a consistent size of them.

A varied contingent of Amphibians appeared when my palm hit the ground; and when I say varied, I mean that I got everything from a tadpole to a toad the size of my room.

I got at least a total of twelve toads. Gamakichi was one of them.

And they instantly began to fight amongst themselves for who got to battle the Hyuuga.

The Tadpole just slithered around for a while before it poofed away, probably bored.

Gamakichi came to sit on one of my shoulders, not deigning to do anything useful. He just chattered away, telling me everything about the various toads that had appeared and mentioning some news about his father.

I listened to his inane chattering for a while.

I heard him remark, rather cruelly, that I had probably summoned the worst toads possible to help me.

The toads had then agreed to take on Neji together, but now they couldn't decide on what method to use to destroy him.

Some argued for one way, some for another, and it was clear they wouldn't be able to agree.

Neji just stood in the same place from where he had started off of, and the initial bemusement had slipped off his face, only to be replaced by a look of self-satisfaction and derisive contempt.

"Hah. You can't even manage to summon your Toads without making them sink into uselessness. You're pathetic and it would be wise of you to quit now before you lose."

Grrr. That arrogant little…

"Forget it then. I'll take you down on my own," I muttered.

I moved forwards to attack him, aiming for the side of his head that wasn't protected by an uplifted palm, but it all went to hell from there.

The toads finally decided that something had to be done to help me, and they all rushed simultaneously. Unfortunately, against a target as relatively small as Neji, they all converged on each other way before they reached the Hyuuga.

The resulting pileup was an embarrassment worthy of a mid-battle face-palm.

But I desisted.

I nearly avoided getting hit on my heart a minute into the taijutsu match, and Neji ended up disabling one of my arms.

I made up some bravado-induced bluffs regarding how I was just warming up and then I used the Shadow clone jutsu.

Neji had looked speculative for a second before getting back to his self-assured expression.

He had every reason to be self-assured.

All it had taken for him to destroy my copies was a few seconds long combination of Hyuuga-taijutsu that would have left my jaw slacked with awe if it weren't for the fact that my teeth had glued themselves shut in frustration.

The toads seemed to come to a consensus when they saw me getting so completely owned.

They sent the largest one amongst their group to tackle the Hyuuga directly, while the rest of them arranged themselves in a circle around us, possibly to prevent the Hyuuga to escape the Initiating Toad.

It threw Neji off for a while. Instead of tackling the Giant, he preferred to dodge around it. I repressed the urge to laugh at his frustrated expression and I summoned a fresh bunch of clones, eager to push my advantage.

It all went wrong, again, when some of the clones appeared right on top of the toads forming the perimeter.

The resulting confusion of Angry Narutos and Angry Toads gave Neji an opening where he banked on the distraction to use his attacker to his own advantage.

He ran towards me, and Gamakichi leapt off of me with a squeak. And the Toad leapt towards the Hyuuga.

If Neji had done nothing but run, the Toad would have landed on top of him and crushed him. But at the very last second, he stopped, held his arms out, and started spinning.

By the time I noticed the Blue dome that Surrounded Neji, The toad landed on him, somehow bounced off, and was headed on a collision course directly for me.

I though, had no idea on how to make a glowy blue dome that could bounce off Giant Toads.

"Oof!" I eloquently exclaimed from under the chest of the lousy summon. The Impact had all but crushed me. I vowed to never summon the giant moron ever again.

In time, my clones and the rest of the toad summons managed to help me from under the idiot over me, who wouldn't simply get back up for some reason.

Neji had momentarily retreated off to some corner of the arena, and I asked my clones to keep an eye out for him. I summoned another group of them, just in case, and asked them to spread around and look for him.

Despite all the times I summoned my clones, I was feeling constantly re-energized; I guessed it had something to do with the mist of red chakra that still surrounded me.

Darn, but the fuzz-ball was useful.

A few moments later, the clones and the toads came back to me and screamed out that they couldn't find my opponent.

The giant toad was still out for the count, but oddly enough, it hadn't vanished.

"Now what?" a clone asked me, glaring at me.

"What do you mean, now what?" I growled, my voice guttural and rough.

"We find Neji and kill him!"

"I coulda told you that…" he muttered, wandering off to go ride one of the toads around the stadium.

I sighed, imagining the embarrassment Sakura would be feeling to be associated with my troop of cowboy-masqueraders.

I briefly scanned the gallery where all the contestants waiting for their match were lounging about, looking for Sasuke. He still hadn't made it yet, and I relaxed my guard, wondering and grumbling about stuck up bastards and the way they never cared for anyone else's matches.

I regretted doing that soon enough.

A split second before the charged palm hit me, I felt something intruding the personal space around me. And when the palm hit me, right at the back of my neck, I realized that I was very likely dead, unless the Kyuubi had pulled another one out of its tails again.

I sincerely hoped that it had.

As it was, I couldn't feel my lower body at all. My confidence and any fragment of bravery that remained in me were steadily draining away.

I fell to the ground, somehow face up.

I looked at Neji, fist raised, with an ugly snarl on his face.

I closed my eyes…

* * *

><p>How <em>had<em> the Kyuubi saved me from that one? I'd have to ask the Demon later.

In the meantime, the clones got the toads back on their feet.

Some of them started riding the moderately big ones, cavorting around, waving their arms like idiots once again.

Was I usually like this? I wondered.

I did not stop to think about it. I had more useful things to worry about. Neji had currently retreated from me, avoiding and launching quick and agile counter attacks against the toad riders that kept trying to charge into the Hyuuga. His hand was still limp and out for the count.

It gave me some time to let proper feeling come back into my body, and to think of where the Hyuuga had materialized from.

Abruptly, I glanced to the top of the biggest toad in the arena, still motionless and prone.

_Of course… He lay down on top of it, and avoided detection… and he attacked us when our back was turned…_

_Hmm…_ I listened to the mumbling voice, offering rationalizations and plans to win the match for good. It had a sadistic and sarcastic twinge to it that was extremely familiar.

_Oh come on_, I thought dourly.

"Kyuubi?" I whispered into the air.

…_So you can hear me, you lousy ingrate._

I stood, nonplussed, for a moment before erupting into a volcano of fury and frustration.

"It wasn't enough that I had to spend every night with you. Now you're gonna stay in my mind?.!" I was enraged. So enraged that I needed to sink my claws into something instantly, or I would have ripped my own flesh off.

I seeked out Neji who was running helter-skelter across the arena, chased by my clones and summons that had had their numbers reduced to four. All the other clones had disappeared, and so had the toads.

I glanced at the crowd, and noticed the awe-struck looks of the people as they stared at the 'Hyuuga prodigy' as he dealt with so many enemies without a single scratch. Their neglect of my own prowess was clear enough.

I charged madly at the Bastard, on all four legs at tremendous speed.

I saw possible ways to launch myself feed themselves into my consideration; ways to attack that would make it unable for the ninja to counter.

I jumped high, just as a toad-riding clone dashed by and Neji launched himself into the air, jumping to avoid the pathetic lunge and take out my clone with a stab to the back.

But just as his blow connected with my doppelganger, mine was going to connect with his spine.

He glanced back at me, mocking and veined eyes narrowed, and started to spin while in the air. But before he could call up his defense, my hand, moving faster than even my own eyes could see, had already reached him.

He flew downwards, straight through my summon who dispelled at the sheer force of the flying ragdoll.

He connected with the ground, leaving a sizable crater around him.

I grinned, eager to see the foolishly arrogant child suffer.

I landed on the ground beside him.

He looked at me, at the feral impression on my face, and muttered feebly, "You were… just a dobe… How?"

I just smiled. The over-confident idiot would see for himself. I was a thousand year old entity whose power could barely be comprehended by the likes of a child. If I had been under their skill level when I was in the Academy, I-

Wait. How could I be a thousand years old and yet be a child only a few years back?

Yet both of the statements were true. They had to be.

I shook my head internally, throwing such useless concepts into the wind. This boy needed to suffer.

I picked him up by his collar, and cocked my hand back for a blow that would crush his nose off.

And then I looked into his pale eyes. And I saw my own reflection.

My eyes were Red.

* * *

><p>He let go of Neji as if he was burning. The defeated ninja flopped down onto the ground, while the Jinchuriki of the nine-tails stared off into space, hands trembling slightly.<p>

The red fog around him did not let up. His eyes did not fade back to their normal cerulean. The bloodthirsty look remained on his face.

But he backed off.

The proctor of the exam declared Naruto the winner, in response to wide-spread pseudo-silence and muttering. No-one dared insinuate it in front of the hokage when it was clearly forbidden to do so, but they could have screamed that the killing intent leaking out from the arena earlier wasn't just the blond-haired boy's.

They were actually quite surprised that Neji had survived.

A medic team came with a stretcher and carried Neji's unconscious body away. Somewhere in the spectators, Hinata rushed to where Neji was being taken, panicked at the state of her cousin, and Hiashi Hyuuga followed behind at a slower pace.

All of the people who had known Naruto were surprised, fearful and intrigued, depending on the level of knowledge about him that they possessed.

Gaara's grin had shifted from anticipatory to downright bloodthirsty and predatory.

And elsewhere, in the mind of a certain little victor…

_Why? Why did you make me do this?_

_**I didn't make you do anything. The motive to harm him was your own.**_

_I wasn't myself earlier… I'm still not myself… I feel like… I feel like a demon. What are you doing to me?_

The boy felt a small pang in the back of his head, something that shouldn't have originated from him, and yet felt inexplicably like his own.

_**I'm just present in your mind. I'm doing nothing.**_

_How?_

A confused tangle of an image swam before Naruto's eyes; reaching onwards, feeling, seeing, sensing, becoming-

_**Your eyes…**_

Naruto recalled the way he had looked when he had seen himself in the eyes of another.

_What about them, you-_

He barely stopped himself from swearing at the Fox.

_**Look at the crater… closely.**_

He stared, not expecting anything. He wondered about his appearance, the way everyone would react to his demonic visage even as he observed the spider-web pattern of the indent in the ground.

He made plans to flee out of the village to prevent himself from harming others in his rage, even as he saw a few microscopic dust particles, covered with blood, fly away in a breeze.

He wallowed in self pity, even as he looked at the legs of an ant walking nearby, and then at the tendrils and hair that extended out from them…

_**Stop!**_ Yelled a voice-that-was-not-a-voice that jolted his vision back to acceptable levels of detail.

_What… what happened?_

_**You just saw through my eyes, child.**_

And just like that, Naruto was struck dumb.

_The first time Fuzzball called me something nice…_ crossed his mind briefly.

Then, he looked at the ant, and saw it as a little speck in the middle of the dirt a few metres away from him.

He focused on the fondness, on the euphoria that echoed itself inside his heart, coercing him to end his worries and revel in the joys of the vision he now had. Questions about why he couldn't do so earlier could be ignored.

_**And because you can see through my eyes, **_the fox continued,_** you can-**_

The Blonde boy's eyes went towards the hokage's booth, and time crawled to a standstill for him.

* * *

><p><em>He is stronger than we could have predicted<em>, Orochimaru thought. _And more vicious too_, he remarked to himself, comparing the picture of the jinchuriki from the forest of death to the animalistic boy that had fought in front of him in the arena.

And he's made a contract with toads…

Jiraiya's handiwork was apparent. The fool was the only one capable of giving these techniques to the boy. But apparently the old fool had been up to more sinister things.

_Who'd have thought that he would teach the boy how to harness the power of his demon?_ He thought, amused.

_Gaara may actually have a problem with the plan now._

Orochimaru watched the boy as he stood still for minutes upon minutes, while the proctor futilely asked for him to leave, and Sarutobi made plans for the Uchiha's match to be forwarded to make time for him.

He made contingency plans for handling the boy if he got too much out of control. But suddenly, the boy in question looked up at the booth.

The cloud of red chakra around him hadn't let up. It only strengthened itself.

The boy's eyes remained a slitted red.

And suddenly, through some form of intuition Orochimaru himself couldn't comprehend, he had a feeling he had just been seen through.

* * *

><p><strong>...<strong>

**I tried experimenting with a first person perspective for this chapter... I hope it didn't screw the story.**

**X.x**


	8. MidGame

**...**

**I've lost it. It's taken ages to write this, and it isn't as long as it should be. Sigh.**

* * *

><p>It was official now; Kakashi was a dead man. He had successfully taken the idea of 'late' and bludgeoned it until it yielded to the most ridiculous stretching of deadlines possible.<p>

And he'd thought that his sensei was bad earlier…

Once Itachi was over and dealt with, Kakashi would be taken care of too. Brutally.

The innocent victim of this scenario was following the Gray-haired Jonin at a safe distance and at an unusually sedate pace for Ninja. Despite the many times that he had insisted, verbally and non-verbally, that they hurry up and get his match over with, the Gray-haired asshole had only slowed down even more.

By now, they were probably moving slower than snails. No, scratch that. They were not even moving at all.

Kakashi was standing stock-still, looking in the vicinity of the Arena. The wind blew by the both of them, brisk and dusty, causing their hair to sway unrealistically.

The black-haired boy's hands barely restricted themselves from leaking out a torrent of chirping chakra and plunging them in front of him. He wanted to fight, Damnit!

And abruptly, out of nowhere at all, the streets were filled with running people. Men and women, of all ages, professions and sizes were prancing around as if the very dogs of hell were after them. Soon, the screaming started.

"Ah! It's an INVASION!" a stereotypically stupid man exclaimed.

It was all the prompting the rest of them needed.

"The Demons have returned!" some shouted around.

"They'll kill us! They'll kill us all! RUN!" the especially weak and cowardly whimper-screamed.

A cloud of dust was rising slowly over the arena, just as it was forming over the streets. Or was it smoke?

Sasuke couldn't shake off the feeling that it was something more sinister.

He glanced over to Kakashi - or where he was standing before he had vanished so conveniently. He growled, and he thought to himself: _This had better be worth it. Or my list for Vengeance will soon become unmanageable._

He considered asking someone... It didn't work out so well. He was just reprimanded about standing idle before he'd opened his mouth for asking and before he knew it, he was standing somewhere in the middle of a bunch of women who still took the time out to pinch his cheeks even in the middle of a crisis.

He had run, predictably.

He set off along the roofs, always going against the flow of people, always heading towards the heart of the disturbance. And soon enough, Sasuke started to see a lot of different Ninja, some chunin, some jounin, all working to keep the stampeding herds of people in check and guide them towards the shelters built inside the hokage monument. They were able to work effectively; everyone naturally tended to flock towards the Auras of security the Shinobi were radiating.

Sasuke paid them no mind aside from taking care to sidestep the routes they were likely to take. Keeping to the rooftops helped in that regard.

However, the convenience of the buildings ended when the arena got nearer. But just as Sasuke was going to jump down onto the ground, arms stretched behind him, ready to take off into a sprint, he caught a view of his destination from the ground up and froze in place.

The arena was mutilated beyond recovery. Only ruins of it would ever remain afterwards.

Three behemoths were warring it out in the middle and they occasionally smashed, or smashed each other, into the broken walls. A piece fell off of the violated building with each buffet.

The combined killing intent was overwhelming. But thankfully, none of it was directed at him. He headed forwards on slightly numb feet, intent on seeing the damage for himself.

His priorities had just been massively warped. He was no longer intent on seeking Gaara and testing his newfound strength against him. They were more focused on finding out just what the hell happened, and what it meant for him.

He reached a gaping hole in the fence and he went through and sprinted into the building. Dark and mysterious shadows fluctuated around him as the walls vibrated, breaking the roof up from above him and occasionally showering rocks downwards.

The Hyuuga clan head was coming from the other side of the corridor, carrying the limp forms of Neji and Hinata on either shoulder, running with full abandon with his Byakugan on.

"Run, you idiot! A child like you will only get killed!" the White-eyed man shouted back at him when Sasuke only rushed onwards with barely a hint of recognition.

Sasuke stopped, but only for a moment. He took a little while to assess himself and the situation; determined that no, nothing that would be happening inside would be able to kill him if he was careful, and went onwards.

Light poured in from an exit up ahead, and tentatively, he bent his head around and looked outside into the Arena.

It only took a moment for his eyes to acclimatize, and once he took the sight in, his Sharingan activated itself without any prompting, or any conscious intent. His instinct deemed it necessary for his survival, and Sasuke was in full agreement with it.

A giant Tanuki was dissolving into Sand as a giant Snake – possibly as large as the Arena itself – was constricting it from where it was wrapped around it.

The mouth of the snake was fending off blows from a giant sword wielding toad, and the amphibian in question was actively trying to dodge tendrils of sand that seemed to be intent on dragging it down into the earth or ripping it into slimy shreds.

The three were at an apparent stalemate; neither had the edge on the others, and before Sasuke's eyes the Sand monster reshaped itself into a Tanuki right behind the Toad and pressed its attack.

"Haha! I've never felt free-er! Bring it on, ya wimps!" The Tanuki bragged in a highly uncharacteristic accent for its apparent majesty and size. The low-pitched grunts and roars of the Snake and the Toad seemed more appropriate.

The Snake told the Sand-monster to shut up and die – A threat met with eerie laughter.

Sasuke ducked back into the tunnel when the Snake landed dangerously close to him, but he poked his head back out soon enough.

The beasts had nothing more to them, and the Uchiha's Red eyes shifted to the erstwhile Kage's booth.

He was met with a scary sight that his Sharingan exaggerated.

The Third Hokage staring eye-to-eye, while armed with a staff, with a Ninja that looked notoriously like Orochimaru, the Snake Sannin.

Then his eyes shifted to the seats directly below them.

Naruto, a shroud of Red Chakra surrounding him, flashing into and out of battle while four Sound-nin fought him simultaneously.

_So there is an invasion_, Sasuke muttered with a 'duh'-ish undertone.

The collective power assembled on the roof was more than enough to blow Sasuke's mind away by sheer comparison.

His Sharingan interpreted the scene for him in a way that a pragmatic mind would appreciate immensely.

It told him that the Hokage and the Snake Sannin were not using their Chakra at all, for some weird reason.

It told him that one of the four ninja was molding an Earth jutsu, and it copied the technique immediately.

It told him that another one was using a bloodline; weaving steel-strong webs around Naruto that were ripped through without effort.

It told him that another one, one that resembled two bodies fused into one by the chakra that was being molded simultaneously in different ways, was actively engaging in combat with the Blond and was barely surviving. His comrades were covering for him, or he would have been dead.

It also told him that the fourth and final ninja was the one giving his teammate the most trouble, using three summons that seemed to be linked to her through the flute she was playing to pummel her opponent whenever she got the chance to.

But the most shattering revelation was what his eyes told him about his rival. They refused to comprehend what the chakra around him was, or the way it was molded. They followed his movements when he moved to physically attack, and found them faster than Rock Lee's. They tried to process the overall picture and they tried to find a way to optimize and imitate it, but they fell short of actually being able to carry through.

A gasp left him involuntarily.

_Where does he get this power from?_

Sasuke no longer felt as if his Chidori was something to feel proud about.

He was assailed by a feeling of self-loathing so strong that he would have turned back and left for his compound, unable to look at the enraged face of Naruto; Naruto, the Dead last of the Academy, who was able to handle four lethal ninja without breaking a sweat.

His confidence seemed childish to him now.

What was the point of his existence, of his drive, of his past achievements, if all that he had done, all that he could do, would get him nowhere in the long run when people such as Naruto could get unimaginable power by a fluke?

He dimly felt that he was not thinking straight, but something ugly was manifesting itself in Sasuke's emotions, something akin to his hate, yet not quite that. Something similar to envy, yet more dark. Something like anger, yet more cool, more contained.

The burning that swept away from his neck, poisonous yet invigorating, was unnoticeable amongst the burn of the stupid tears that Sasuke was busy suppressing.

But soon enough, he looked up, and no longer saw the paragons of power that had had him feeling inconsequential.

Where the Hokage stood, he saw an old man, beaten by age and doomed to defeat.

Where Naruto was fighting, he saw a shitload of power, but not one as overwhelming as he was considering. Just another bloodline, probably, nothing he couldn't counter or see through.

Where the four Sound-nin fought, he saw specialized yet individually unimportant weaklings.

And where Orochimaru cackled, he saw… He saw a fount of power and wisdom that was unsurpassable. He saw the means to his end, the embodiment of what he had been wishing for in his incomprehensible moment of weakness.

He saw what would justify his existence, what would let him have his revenge and so much more.

He charged forward, sprinting up the walls towards all the human combatants, avoiding all the oversized ones nimbly. He would make his mark yet, starting with the weakest.

* * *

><p>Snarls resounded in Naruto's head.<p>

_It never ends… The hatred never ends…_

The force that had no possible description other than pure hate was like a magnet to all the bloodthirsty predilections that were inherent to him.

He glanced at the person he knew as the Kazekage. And he felt as if every muscle in his body wanted to convulse; the presence of that man felt like a blight on the world. One that Naruto simply could not allow to exist.

The growling voice echoed in his mind. _Such malice…_

The urge only got stronger the more he looked. He was beholding an abomination; something that shouldn't be, and like all the countless abominations he had destroyed in ages past, this one would be taken care of too.

He was also a terrifying beacon of power. Compared to the old man sitting next to him, this monster was like a fireball in front of a candle. How he knew Naruto couldn't tell, but he felt familiar with making such analyses and he accepted the judgment.

Eventually, the first move forced itself out of his hands.

It was like a dam bursting. The urge to destroy had grown unstoppable.

His hands blurred through seals he had practiced to the point of wearing off his digits.

"Summoning jutsu!" he screamed, and his chakra shroud flared brighter as his palm hit the ground.

A mountain of smoke erupted from under him, and when it cleared away it revealed a Toad of gargantuan proportions.  
>A Toad with a Pipe and a coat. And a sword.<p>

* * *

><p>Everyone in the stadium was askance at the appearance of a boss summon; at the hands of a genin no less. But more importantly, why had it been summoned after his match was already done with?<p>

Showing off much? thought Sakura, her eye twitching.

What the… thought Ino, unable to complete her mental sentence because the sheer mass of the Toad seemed to defy description.

Everyone in the Arena had a similar reaction; if a pin had been dropped, it would have been heard while everyone stared slack jawed. But the toad had decided that he had been silent long enough for a good entrance, and he opened his mouth, ready to ask his purpose.

Everyone else started talking too, unfortunately; and no-one really heard the frog when it begun.

* * *

><p>"What's the matter brat? Summoned us twelve times and you still need ME for your stupid school-work?" he drawled.<p>

"Him. We have to kill Him," came the twisted voice of his summoner from between his eyes.

He squinted to bring a figure bathed in red light into focus, and he saw the maniacal gleam on its face.

He looked to where the figure's hand pointed, and he saw the Sandaime Hokage, sitting with a veiled man who looked more annoyed by the second.

"The Kazekage, eh? You'd better have a good reason for damn near starting a war, kid. Jiraiya'll never let me hear the end of it," the long-suffering toad said before his sword was in his hands.

He didn't have any particular inhibitions about attacking one human over the other, but he did find it annoying when the Toad Sage came to Mt. Myobokou to 'talk'.

Gamabunta glimpsed the horrified look on the third Hokage's face before his weapon moved, but he moved it anyways.

The sword plunged towards the veiled man never made contact, however. The third Hokage intercepted the blow with his hands, horror changing to anger and disbelief.

"Naruto! Gamabunta! Have you two lost your minds?" the Hokage shouted, shoving the sword away.

"What is the meaning of this?" Came the simultaneous cry of the target. The third Hokage glanced back – and his eyes widened.

Hmmm… Heheheh. Good thinking Kid, the toad boss mused, respect for his summoner already rising.

* * *

><p>Somewhere in the background, a distraught Sand-nin and her equally horrified brother gasped "Father!" while the third sibling just stared impassively. Multitudes of other people were nearly screaming in disbelief as the apparent treachery occurred at the hands of the Village prankster.<p>

Several adult ninja were suddenly rendered alert, their instincts warning them that shit had just hit the fan. Hard.

"That stance…" the hokage murmured, face suddenly sorrowful.

* * *

><p>In that moment, Orochimaru CURSED his love for theatrics; he'd made the same mistake he had made in the Forest of Death that had alerted the Uchiha to the fact that his teammate was an impostor. His snake-stance, something built into his muscle memory, was hard to not assume even for a Sannin like him. Unfortunately, it was also a universally recognized trademark.<p>

The 'kazekage' straightened up, slowly, and he transmitted an unseen signal; the next second saw feathers falling from the Sky, and everyone who couldn't take pre-emptive action falling asleep.

Slow cackling sounded from beneath the veil, and the entire façade was pulled back in a long, repulsing peel of facial skin.

When his face was revealed, the container of the Kyuubi visibly shuddered.

He dropped onto his hands, growls ripping out of his throat, killing intent radiating out like a bitch.

"So you do recognize me… Sarutobi-sensei…" The menace in his tone was rather sad; it was a clear attempt to divert the shame of his discovery.

_Sensei would have taken leverage of it and fooled around – if it were only a decade or two ago. It's no fun now…_

The sword that was pointed at him moved once more and Orochimaru dodged it before he could be skewered. The Hokage summoned Enma, probably intending to press an offensive to neutralize the threat quickly while pushing Naruto away from the fight-

It all went to hell for the old man when a bijuu, free from torment as its host fell under the Sleeping Genjutsu's effect, rose with a cry of "Oh yeah! Freedom!"  
>He visibly stopped, torn between helping his precious civilians or helping his pet jinchuriki.<p>

The blonde nuisance jumped into the foray, and despite the cries of the Hokage for him to fall back, he didn't.

Said nuisance found himself flying away from the Hokage booth courtesy of a well aimed kick from the snake-sannin.

Orochimaru was pleased with how he had envisioned the leaf's downfall and he wanted to stick to as much of the shattered invasion plan as he could; he quickly went through seals and summoned Manda.

"Your feast lies before you," Orochimaru said needlessly as the Snake appeared.

"What feast, you idiot?"

Stumped, Orochimaru looked around at the seats in the arena – the _empty_ seats in the arena.

_I could've sworn…_ His eyebrows creased. _Never mind._

He looked edgily at the Snake's grim expression, and not for the first time thought that having a Sharingan would be worthwhile just because it meant that he could control Manda with it.

"You've crossed the line this time, you-"

Orochimaru was saved from the consequences of the summoning by the Sand-demon, who wanted nothing more than to pick on beings his own size.

The giant Toad got embroiled in the fight too, as soon as Manda's tail hit him on the head, knocking his oversized pipe out of his mouth.

The three colossal animals started brawling like kids, limbs, tendrils and tail flying, while the enraged jinchuriki, still embroiled in his fury, climbed upwards to him and his erstwhile sensei.

_Daargh… How did he even know I was a threat? Not even the old fool could tell if something was wrong!_

It didn't matter though.

The Sound four would be arriving shortly.

"So, Sarutobi-sensei… How've the years been for you?" the Sannin turned away from the approaching bundle of berserk rage and asked, trying to be cordial for irony's sake.

There was no reply. The Leader of the Leaf stayed impassive and still. Even as a fist headed straight towards his face.

And passed right through him.

_A Clone? _Orochimaru scoffed. A simple Clone was way below the usage of the 'god of Shinobi', and he knew that the Third knew that he knew it.

Orochimaru mused over it for a while.

_Oh Come On._

It all clicked in his mind. He looked at the empty arena, devoid of all blood, even though the Sand-Demon had been unleashed right in the midst of a _full_ set of seats.

Orochimaru smiled murderously even as he cursed his Sensei to the worst depths of hell.

* * *

><p><strong>...<strong>

**...Have mercy?**

**Updates will come waaaayyyyy more slowly now. Real-life issues. Sadness and sorrow. Read and Review. Yada yada yada.**

**T.t**


	9. Back to Sewerland

**...**

**I'm alive. Yayy. Everything's fine, thanks for the reviews, yada yada yada...**

* * *

><p>The <em>real<em> battle, the one that _actually_ decides whether you kill your enemy or die by his hand, is never really fought on a battlefield.

After all, all that a bystander would see in a hypothetical fight is a person trading a few punches with another person. Then the attacker would suddenly die, and the revealed truth would be something ridiculously complicated like a genjutsu within a genjutsu.

One thing leads to the learning of another in the world of calculated murder and deception, and with time a ninja would be able to predict the actions of lesser opponents to such an extent that there wouldn't really be a fight at all.

For now, the more experienced ninja was the one facing technical difficulties; mostly because of age, partly because of overwhelming responsibility... It was sad how time, the very thing that let someone gain all that experience, was the same thing that made it rather worthless as well.

And thus, The Third Hokage, fabled 'God of Shinobi' and master of all ninja techniques, knew the only possible outcome of a fight against his student; his own demise.

He wasn't worrying about _that_ though. As a leader responsible for the safety of his people, he could not allow it to happen. He knew that there were more ways to win a fight than simply decking it out, and Sarutobi had other crises to attend to.

Naruto, that stubborn-headed Demon-possessed child, had jumped between him and his student at a truly unfortunate moment. Unfortunate for himself, that is. To the Hokage, it was the absolutely perfect distraction and with two quick jutsu; one a variant of the many Earth-style jutsu that accomplished very similar feats, and one a simple cloning technique, he passed right through the ground beneath his feet leaving behind an empty image.

The last thing he saw was Orochimaru looking down the railing, watching the thrown victim of his precisely placed kick with gleeful satisfaction.

The old man knew one thing though; as long as Orochimaru thought that he had a clear shot at vengeance, he would pursue it relentlessly. He planned the rest of his actions keeping this very exploitable fact in mind.

With a small thud he dropped down into the internal corridors of the arena and made four shadow clones that he sent off to lead Orochimaru away, preferably into the forest where there wouldn't be a chance of collateral damage, or pretty much anywhere at all provided that he wouldn't stop to kill anyone else.

Then he used the same jutsu he had performed earlier to let the ground swallow him up, only this time he spread its range to the entire arena. First came a slight awareness of the Arena itself, the stone and cement resolving itself into another skin of sorts. He could feel the quick jumps of Shinobi leaving the vicinity, the frequency of such individuals decreasing steadily. In time, The Arena became completely devoid of human activity, so he progressed the jutsu onwards; everyone still in the line of fire sunk into the masonry, considerably safer than they were before.

Just in case, the Hokage left a shadow clone buried deep in the ground to keep the Jutsu active.

With those that couldn't defend themselves relatively out of harm's way, the old man was able to direct his attention to the most pressing matter at hand; the state of his village.

He did not doubt that his student would not dare to take on the entire village alone, even if he was relying on the power of the one-tailed jinchuriki to detract the main forces of the Leaf while he had his 'revenge' on his 'sensei'. No, there was something much, _much_ larger afoot here. Thankfully, with all the behemoths having dragged themselves into their own little war, humans could focus on humans with nothing getting in the way. Or so he hoped.

He ran outwards, his body protesting against the excessive division of chakra amongst his shadow clones, passing the broken gateway and rushing onto the rooftops of the nearest buildings in an attempt to survey the damage.

It wasn't a pretty sight. Black clad ninja, more than could be counted, were running around everywhere and there weren't enough from the leaf to counter them before they did something like set a house on fire. Mayhem and Chaos ruled.

Konoha's forces were mounting up a reasonable defense though.

Sarutobi saw Inoichi and Shikaku take out a group of ten Ninjas within five seconds, prolonged only because they wanted to show off their amazing techniques to each other while watching their victims squirm.

He would have to have a word with those two later on; they seemed to forget that humour was something best not expressed in war, for it never cared about who became its punchline.

The outlook looked dire, but the Leader of the Leaf knew that in time, with a little effort, the enemy would be repelled. They had chosen to attack at the wrong time, and now he would make sure that his village was rescued by the end of the day and his student was captured or killed.

He coughed out, his aged lungs complaining about the ample amount of dust in the air. Quite a few establishments lay in ruins, and their rubble covered the streets. A few splotches of blood were visible here and there, accompanied by mangled and discarded corpses of masked ninja. In the far distance, around the forests and on the Hokage monument, giant frogs could be seen battling equally large snakes, their weight shaking the entire ground when they landed from their jumps.

He glanced a little higher and noticed the rainbow that adorned the sunlit sky. He chuckled at the irony of it all.

Soon, Sarutobi's lips tightened as he felt that he had dawdled long enough, and he jumped off the roof he was standing on and made his way towards his office building steadily. Abruptly, he came to a stop, smiling slightly. "I can sense you, Kakashi. What's the status of the village?"

A grey haired head made its way out of the shadows of the door of a ruined building, followed by a bloody torso and arms, and legs and feet with slightly tattered pants. "Lord Hokage," he acknowledged his commander with a nod.

"A horde of what seem to be sound ninja have overrun the gates and summoned snakes in five key locations inside the village. Jiraiya is dealing with the reptiles as we speak. Otherwise, there doesn't seem to be much of an issue," he nonchalantly spoke, shaking a few droplets of blood off his gloves.

He noticed an inhumanly large pile of sliced up bodies lying outside the door of the once standing tavern Kakashi had come out of, and each had an expression of disgusted surprise on their faces.

_Just what technique did he- Never mind. I think I'd rather not know..._

Sighing, he said, "I see. Kakashi, I need you to go back into the arena and isolate Naruto from whatever he may have landed himself into. He seems to be completely under his demon's control..."

Although how the jinchuriki had been able to stand still for a second without attacking anyone was beyond even the likes of the third Hokage to answer.

"Of course, Lord Hokage. Anything else?" The Hatake drawled, confidence oozing out of every pore that wasn't soaked in blood.

"No Kakashi. Although if you have the time, I trapped the entire mass of the Arena spectators inside the stone stairs and floor of the Arena. Try to get them to safety."

And with that the leader of the leaf ran towards his office, off to save the day, leaving behind a Ninja who had questioned the sanity of those around him for so long that he had long ago decided to leave his own somewhere in the muddied sands of time.

* * *

><p>Rage. Malice. Hate. Anger.<p>

Everywhere. Within and without.

The emotions were everpresent; shifting, rolling in waves, changing, yet never showing signs of decreasing. It was just so easy to loose one's self in them all, to let all inhibitions, all semblances of rational thought go, and just rip and tear and slash and bite and make everyone hurt...

"Move aside."

The voice came from behind, harsh and menacing, yet very familiar. It sent a shudder throughout the world around, marking itself as something more than just another person.

The source of the two words was sought out instinctually, eyes roving.

His face made itself apparent; black markings spread across skin, eyes glowing blood red and mouth curled in a snarl. His arm stretched forwards and grasped a shoulder, restraining it loosely.

_The Uchiha?_

His visage filled the entire available field of vision...

The wind blew past, carrying the smell of spilt blood and human-produced Spider webs away with it...

In time the overwhelming rush of emotion faded back and almost went away, and another thought – Sasuke? - resonated alongside troubled thoughts of its own.

What had seemed so effortless only minutes ago, moving hands and feet while seeing and hearing and feeling... In a moment, it became almost impossible to accomplish.

"Sasuke, What the hell happened to you?" Lips it could feel but not control moved, shaping the sound up. Emotions dripped from the words...

_Disbelief. Fear. Betrayal...?_

"What are you doing? Get the hell out of here! These guys'll-"

"They won't do anything," the black-haired human-child growled...

_Rage. Disgust._

"Get up and fight or run away – I don't care. But just shut up."

Slowly, so slowly that it seemed as if it was a dream, sense of identity and time returned to the Kyuubi. The available scope of attention expanded beyond the immediate and the people behind the Uchiha also became noticeable.

The realization that this 'body' wasn't its own came as well. So did the existence of the mind alongside its own.

A quick sorting out through the surrounding chakra and it became clear there were no injuries. On the boy, anyways.

Said boy was starting to blow up from annoyance, but it seemed as if some part of him was conflicted - wanted to say, "Okay fine, go to hell. Who cares about you anyways." But it was evidently not true.

Then other voices made themselves known, increasing in volume like a radio being tuned.

"You gotta be fuckin' kidding me. He just walks up here? Like that? To us?"

"Man, I knew these people were idiots, but this? Hah! And Orochimaru was all, like..."

"Oh my, big bad _Uchiha_ finally came! Now what do we do?"

Jeers and insults rang out from all four of them. They were just standing comfortably, amused as if the biggest joke in the universe had stepped up in front of them in all its glory.

But the world outside was no longer devoid of movement. The target of mockery was telling his enemies about how he was very very angry; in incoherent words and devastating fireballs. The fox's blond jailor snapped and joined the fray too, lending a few blows to Sasuke's explanation.

Bored after a while of spectating, the Kyuubi tried to force its borrowed body to move, trying to regain the effortless control its container's rage had provided... If only it knew how. The will to move was there, the presence of said will was in the target appendage of this human body, yet not even a single twitch could be managed now.

Suggestions and half formed intentions worked better, although even those rarely did what was intended and depended on whether or not the brat chose to listen to them.

In time, after many repetitive tries and growls of frustration and bemusement, the Demon finally allowed that maybe, just maybe, this one was out of its tail's reach.

_Stupid Seal._

It didn't help that what had been accomplished was producing a lot of uncanny side-effects. It had seemed, for a moment, that the Kyuubi's perception had _vastly_ decreased. The Demon's senses, its mind... They were not meant to work the way they had been. Its memory had been mixed up, its desires had morphed to something unrecognizable... Even when confronted by such intense hatred and malevolence, its control on itself was always sure and steady, yet now...

The brief input from the boy's oddly limited sensory input suggested that they weren't surviving as nicely as they were before. The Uchiha went sailing past to the fists of the giant, lumbering summons; gracefully awkward in midflight, looking like a human juggling ball. The blond brat seemed to have taken a liking to the ground - he kept finding himself there every few seconds or so.

It truly was a joke of a fight, now that the Nine-Tailed Beast thought about it. Fate's great example of humility; letting the demon know that yes, four – and a half, seeing that one of them actually had another body inside them – children could do what it had taken the mightiest of Ninja to do before; bringing the Kyuubi down to the ground. In a way.

The humour was amazing. Just amazing.

The Uchiha didn't seem to think so; his recent and short fist-propelled flights were not at all pleasant, it seemed. His anger had achieved a level where he could barely do anything with his face other than scowl. Or scream.

"Aaaarrgh! Chidori!" A mesmerizingly beautiful explosion of lightening grew out of the angered boy's palm.

Unexpectedly, after a quick dash and a grunt of effort, the Web-spitting ninja fell to the ground, pierced in the side and gasping, drenched in rapidly leaking blood. His multiple arms flailed towards the ground, trying to lift his broken body up.

"Kidomaru!"

The girl gasped, leaving her flute alone. Her summons stopped moving instantly.

_Now would be a good time to take it..._ The fox thought.

The brat jumped forwards, fingers clawed out towards the musical instrument – and he landed on the ground again, pain blooming outwards from his head. Pain that went away quickly, but still jarred his mind. However, he grinned - the fox could share in the mirth - when he felt the flute in his hand.

_Crush it!_

The advice went ignored; the brat preferred showing it off and taunting as a better course of action.

The controller of summons didn't seem to care, oddly. It seemed as if Kidomaru's fall was a cue for a shift in fighting style – Everyone began to shift into grotesque, monstrous forms that barely resembled their previous human ones; humanoid though they were.

It only took a matter of time for them to completely thrash the two Konoha genin into the ground and below. No amount of chakra would help; the more the Demon attempted to give to its container, the less controlled he got. It proved one of the fox's suspicions; the boy needed more individual prowess to use its chakra effectively. One of the newly transformed Sound ninjas smashed the brat's head into the ground - for the last time that day.

Just before the boy's eyes closed and his mind washed into the recesses of his subconscious, the Kyuubi caught the blurry image of a gray-haired Ninja walking towards them.

_**..That was pathetic**.  
><em>

_Oh shut up_, came the feeble reply.

* * *

><p>The Nine-Tails' chakra was useless as long as the boy wasn't using it, and it receded into the seal, checking the boy's body for injury once before going away completely.<p>

Once inside, one conclusion was quite easy to make for the newly re-instated prisoner.

It was **boring**. Just how it had once been justifiable as being peaceful was incomprehensible now.

The boy lay there on the wet unforgiving floor of his own mind, ripples of water lapping at his cheeks slowly... rhythmically...

_Why did it have to end? _the caged demon growled.

It had been soo... Rejuvenating. The Kyuubi had actually felt alive again.

And now... he was back to sitting behind a cage with its head over its tails. Pathetic.

And what was happening outside anyways?

Last that the boy had seen, the gray haired human was approaching the scene of the genin's defeat.

Unfortunately, the blond nuisance could recall two silver haired ninja, one a nice guy, one a not so nice ambiguous loser with glasses.

Idly, the Kyuubi resumed staring back at its container, sprawled out cold on the floor.

It was going to be a long wait.

The Impatience the Fox felt was an entirely alien entity; it had almost forgotten what that particular mix of anxiety and boredom had felt like.

So many things needed discussing, so many ideas needed confirmation...

_Just a few more minutes... he'll wake up himself in a moment..._

He stayed as motionless as earlier though. It was beginning to get troubling.

"**Wake up, whelp!**" It shouted, giving in. It may as well have not said anything for all the good it did.

"**Rise and shine! Your _Ramen_ calls!**"

…Silence. Absolute, hushed silence came in return, the water on the floor still lapping at the nuisance's face...

"**Get the hell up before I shove this ball of chakra down your-**"

"Ahhhhh! Sasuke!"

The boy shot up, panting, swivelling his head from side to side. Then he grimaced.

"Ugh... What the hell happened?"

The he saw the huge face leering from behind him.

"**Hello, Naruto.**"

"DaaaaaaH!"

He clambered back to the stone wall behind him, fear so clearly etched on his face that it could be tasted. The Kyuubi chuckled.

"Oh. It's YOU."

His face darkened. His hands clawed out, then became fists. His eyes trembled.

"Okay. I want Answers, and I want them-"

"**Then we're on the same page.**"

"What the hell was up with you sharing my mind?"

The Kyuubi remained silent and still.

The boy was going to shout; he had already drawn in a deep breath, but then he turned his head towards the ball of levitating orange chakra that had begun floating past him.

"**When you called on my chakra, I knew that something would have changed. Before today, my chakra could only act as a fuel for your own abilities**."

He turned to face the glowing orb, and in an instant the Kyuubi had directed it upon him. The fox looked carefully for a reaction, expecting him to either laugh or grimace as he'd done so on previous encounters with its chakra, but he just looked vaguely comfortable, almost content. It absorbed into his apparent body, and the demon felt the addition of another set of senses to its own.

It was a most curious thing looking at itself sitting inside a cage with huge bars surrounding it from the outside. The sheer giantness of its own image struck home and it thought, amused, that the fear other creatures had for him was most definitely not misplaced.

_It just happened when my chakra got there. My will accompanies it now,_ the fox thought, and the boy heard the words as clearly if they were spoken.

The voice in his mind stunned him. Then his shoulders bowed down, and his teeth bit down on his lip.

"Kyuubi... What happened to me... us... outside? It was like I couldn't control my anger... their anger – it was just so much hate..."

The chakra left him and he looked quite forlorn. The Kyuubi caught a twinge of loss from the brat's mind on its departure, and a memory of when he'd wanted his mother in not so bright nights in days past came with it.

"**I have a question about that too. Where have you been harbouring all that hate?**"

The brat was left nonplussed.

"**Remember carefully. You wanted to kill the Ninja you were paired to fight with; then you felt more than simple resentment towards your villagers.**"

"They sure as hell deserved it. Why do you care so much about it anyways? Some hypocrite you are, talking about hate like it's a bad thing."

The Kyuubi stared deep into the boy's miniscule eyes, daring him to look away and act guilty. And he stared. And he kept on staring.

* * *

><p>Back when he had first come to his mindscape - a few days ago actually - it had been heart-stopping to look into the fiery crimson depths of those piercing eyes. Now, it did not elicit much of a reaction. Or it wouldn't, if only the slight disgust Naruto could see there would go away. It was disturbing, in a way. Naruto just couldn't place the reason why he would be on the receiving end of that particular sentiment.<p>

The eyes closed then, and their possessor asked Naruto one of the many cryptic questions the boy had started to expect from it ever since the Demon had been answering him in its particular brand of withering sarcasm.

"**If there is a being that comprises the entirety of nature, what would it react to the most?**"

It took a while for Naruto to guess what the Fox might have been asking.

He zoned out, and his attention wandered away to his surroundings, gleefully noticing that a drain had opened near a wall in the far side of the corridor, and the water on the ground was draining away at a snails pace from it. "Woah! Hey fuzzy, look! The water's going away!"

The growl that came from the cage reminded the celebrating genin a little too much of an enraged Iruka when someone hadn't done their homework, and he dropped his gaze, thinking about the question.

_Hmm... Nature... a being... That would be, like, a god of nature, right? But wait, weren't gods always created from some part of nature in the first place? And does it really have to be a 'God' anyways? And why would a God react to anything? Unless someone was stealing their powers from them or something... Maybe someone called him a meddling idiot, I've seen bad things happen to ninja who disrespected Gods... Oh, what am I doing?_

He finally looked up, a small mischievous sparkle in his eyes, one that had been oddly absent for the past few days. The Giant, evil and teacherly fuzzball looked expectantly back.

"Is that a trick question? Cuz I can think of many obvious answers, and besides, what kinda being could make up the whole of nature anyways? That would be dumb, beings are a part of nature, not the other way around!"

Naruto stood there, proud of having evaded long complicated loops of thinking. The Fox just chuckled.

Then it looked at the boy, and it seemed as if it was actually focusing on something else, far away. Naruto glared back, expecting something from the giant figure for giving an answer... But the odd thing was, the fox seemed to reveal its teeth, but there was no accompanying growl. Could it have been smiling?

He shook his head, berating himself. He should know better than to expect that, he mused.

When he looked away from the ground, the ball of chakra had returned, levitating and bobbing up and down like a wind-chime.

They waited, Naruto leaning backwards, Kyuubi watching carefully. Slowly, the ball moved forwards. It began to disintegrate. Then wisps of it made their way to the boy's head through its mouth, and he inhaled the little tendrils of light, feeling dizzy, yet light and... happy. There just wasn't another word for it. And then he saw things.

He felt things.

Things not of his own.

_Peace. Security. Well-being. Excitement and acceptance, readiness to live in a world built anew, one where it was as young as everything else._

_But there would always be a blot on it. Little, puny creatures, both in size and intellect. Never did it have anything against them, but inevitably the little creatures would accumulate to such levels that it was impossible to ignore them. And the disease they radiated... It was painful to share the world with them. They wanted to inflict pain. And they enjoyed it._

The memories then shifted to something he recognized.

He was sitting on a chair in his classroom at the academy, somewhere in the middle. The books everyone had in front of them, thin and barely used, were opened to the pages about the night the Kyuubi had attacked the leaf.

"Hey! It happened on my birthday! I was born exactly the Day the Kyuubi Died!" The little prankster bragged.

The rest of the children passed a scornful look to him, obviously not thinking that the fact that he shared his birthday with a massacre was a cool one.

Disappointed, he started grumbling, bristling at the unfairness. _If Sasuke's birthday was this day I'm sure they'd think _that_ was cool..._

He groaned and sunk lower into his chair, idly looking at the board and Iruka scribbling details on it.

A messily clothed boy from the chairs up front raised a question.

"Iruka-sensei? Why did the Kyuubi Attack us anyways?"

Everyone of the thirty or so children quietened, eagerly waiting for the answer.

"It is still not known, Kiba," the teacher answered tiredly, continuing his board-writing. "It has always been thought that the Kyuubi was a force of nature, untameable, unpredictable, and it struck wherever human malice festered. I guess that we just got a little too corrupt for our own good."

Most of the children looked spooked, while their teacher smirked morbidly.

Naruto's view slowly faded back to the cage, and the red eyes of the giant demon fox. The chakra in him dissipated; he could feel the tendrils of warmth leaving, one by one.

He felt as if he had been shown enough to make a conclusion, but years of having his conclusions scoffed at did not go by without marking him in some way. But he just had to ask one thing, just to answer the question he had asked his Demon earlier. He felt as if even the Fox wanted him to, though its expression was inscrutable.

"You hate hate?"

The boy asked bluntly, slightly curious, slightly afraid, and entirely incredulous.

The Kyuubi just turned it's face away, left eye twitching. It lay back down.

Nothing was said after that.

* * *

><p><strong>...<strong>

**If you're confused about anything in this story, do tell where and why. That would help a lot, since I don't really like making Author notes to explain things that the story should speak about itself. Writer's pride, I guess.**

**Sorry for the delay, but I really couldn't help it... I did make this chapter a little longer though. Happy New Year, by the way.**

**X.x**


	10. Sand

**Ah. Feels so strange. I was almost dead for a while back there. I still am, actually. Like an internet connection whose pings went up to 6000, I'm uploading like a snail. Sigh.**

* * *

><p>It was amusing to see just how far its reach had extended to over the course of a few hours.<p>

Of course, its container, prison, nuisance-from-the-seventh-hell, so have you, was in mortal peril, but that wasn't something new. It seemed to be something that one just took for granted where the kid was involved. Might as well do something useful instead of aimlessly pacing around, it decided.

'Something useful' turned out to be making little orbs of orange chakra appear on the boy's side of his mindscape and making them dance around his downcast head in dainty little circles.

The boy, too, was acting slightly out of sorts. Compared to the last time he had ended up in this unfortunately shared living space, he was rather quieted down. Where usually the place would be akin to a tennis court, with the cage an all encompassing net, it felt like a hospital waiting room then. But the pinpoints of energy changed that.

The little human would swat at the orange chakra spheres occasionally, scowling, sometimes screaming at the fox to keep 'them balls' where he couldn't see them, but the fox was just a demon like that and it wouldn't stop unless it wanted to.

As it happened, it didn't want to.

And so the dance of the merry chakra-balls went on.

It must have gotten to the brat because he rose up a few seconds later. "Stop it! Just because you can do it doesn't mean you need to!" he raged, trying to pummel the balls into oblivion. Of course, since they were made of chakra it was a fruitless endeavour to begin with, but rage has its way of screwing with your head.

The demon, unremorseful as ever, kept lifting the targets higher until the child would jump as high as he could and still not reach them. The victim, unrelenting in his quest for vengeance, kept jumping with shouts of frustration and anger.

"Gotcha!"

A fist of his hit one of the orbs and the fox was momentarily surprised to feel the blow as if it had landed on its own person, until it recalled the two-way nature of the seals' unravelling.

Naruto was getting a little too enthusiastic and happy with his apparent victory, so the fox let the whole exercise go as a lost cause.

There was a slight pause where Naruto warily looked around for any other surprises, but after a while of silence he sat down with a huff and folded his arms.

This was perhaps the umpteenth period of silence the two had observed together, silence reigning over the mindscape of the unsilence-able.

The fox noted with minute curiosity that the everpresent sounds of falling droplets were gone, and the water that usually stayed on the floor had vanished as well. It hadn't registered earlier, strangely. Not to mention that the floor did not seem so hard anymore.

"Hey, how'd you do that, anyways?" Naruto asked.

The kyuubi gave its addressee a passing glance before staring back into nothing; Naruto wasn't looking at the demon either, so why bother?

"Showing me those things?" The human continued.

"In my head? All those memories?"

Again, the fox looked at the boy speculatively, then resumed staring at the wall. It just didn't feel like answering, though it didn't know why. For that matter, it didn't know why it had shown all that to the boy in the first place. Neither did it feel any particular hints of anger, or laziness, or frustration... Just an uncomfortable compromise between all three.

It just wanted to curl into a ball and sit there silently for eternity. That wasn't something that was unexpected; the demon was quite lethargic and it knew itself to be so, but coupled with that desire was one to piss off the boy as much as possible.

It was a first in the bijuu's long life to actually want to aggravate someone. Kill and maim or destroy, yes, that was understandable. This, however, wasn't.

It had never thought it could be so petty.

The question deserved an answer though.

"**Chakra.**"

_There. Question answered. Now go away... Oh wait. You can't, sadly._

It looked up to the frustrated looking monkey and saw him wording another question.

"And that thing with my eyes?"

"**Chakra,**" the fox muttered, saying it like it was the most obvious thing in the world and Naruto should have been ashamed of even asking. It even thought of rolling its eyes, but couldn't muster up the energy.

"...And why do you hate hate?"

"**Chak-**"

_Oh wait,_ that_ wasn't chakra._

The fox harrumphed, the child guffawed. And the loser of that particular verbal spar grumbled in a 'you did not win the war' way.

It then busied itself in staring at anything but the only other conscious being in the vicinity, while the boy stared unabashed. Naruto had cupped his face in his arms and was sitting in a posture even the fox could say was going to destroy his spine with time, if not for bijuu regeneration. Or the fact that this was all just in a mindscape.

It was at times like these that the kyuubi cursed it's own existence as a demon; Oh, the power and knowledge that came with being one was more than worth it, but there was so much more to being one of the nine than just that. A little talent that the Kyuubi had inherited - like a bloodline, or a chakraline to be exact; all bijuu had gotten at least one - had been the ability to read intent like an open book.

To be specific, all negative intent.

Which led to all kinds of bad things happening immediately after. For a time the fox could still remember, humanity had feared the nine-tails more than any force alive. Everything that had come before, including the parent of all bijuu's, could be reasoned with to some extent. Not the Fox, though, no. It's drive to destroy the sources of malice that it could feel all the time was like an obsessive compulsion, something without which the demon could not rest in peace.

It took a lot of time for the fox to grow out of it, to put a clamp on the urges and live somewhat in peace with the environment.

And then the Sage's broods had found it. And ever since then it had been one host after another, a horde of humans to dodge and escape from. A damned shame for someone existing from so long ago.

Point being that the fox knew when someone felt unkindly to anyone else. And Naruto did not give any such vibes at all now. In the beginning, yes. Horribly so. And then it had felt so good to terrorize the child into feeling afraid. But now he was unnervingly... nice. The usual rules of intimidation did not apply anymore, and the fox did not appreciate the kid putting it out of its element.

"Why won't you tell me anything?" the boy whined.

What the Kyuubi would've done, had it been completely at ease, was gracefully chew Naruto out and demean him with something regarding his being a brat, but now...

"**Screw you,**" the euphemism dropped out before the demon could even think about it.

Naruto blinked, stunned. He raised an eyebrow and eloquently said "Huh?"

The fox just dropped its face on a tail.

_Screw you? Really?_

Naruto got up and walked to the bars of the cage, gripping them and leaning his head in. Very comfortably in biting distance. His face looked even more unfamiliar, with wide eyes and quirked eyebrows, and the fox was reminded of humans peering into a cage at a zoo.

"You okay?" Naruto asked.

"**Get. Back. From the cage,**" the prisoner growled, to the further lifting of human eyebrows.

The demon regretted it as soon as the words were out of its mouth, because it knew that now Naruto would keep asking the same question over and over again. And the only thing to stop it would be to answer them. Or flick Naruto out of the corridor with a chakra whip. Which was something that should be tried and practised, just in case.

But to the demon's relatively gob-smacking surprise, Naruto drew back and sat back down. Without a word.

"**Well, I'll be,**" the behemoth grudgingly muttered.

"What?"

"**You'd said that talking was a good thing. But you did not talk,**" the demon said, and there was a very slight tone of awe to the words.

"Yeah. I'm starting to figure you out, you know. You can't seem to leave things when they don't act normal. And you always say something when someone pisses you off," the brat said smugly.

"Oh! And you also have this habit of throwing your head on your tails, and I think it means that you're open to conversation, and then when you put your head on your paws instead it means you're just gonna stare at things and grunt alot..."

For a moment, the fox felt quite uncharacteristically affectionate. Then it remembered itself promptly when the child did not stop talking and went on and on about the slightest things that the demon would do. _I spoke too soon_, it thought with a sigh.

"**I do not grunt, you ape. I growl. And I don't throw my head down, I recline,**" the fox corrected, indignified.

"Yeah," Naruto eye-rolled. "You're the laziest creature I've ever seen, no doubt about it."

"**When you're all powerful and you know it, it tends to happen.**"

"Heh. You're not _so_ powerful on that side of the cage," Naruto pointed.

"**Oh really?**"

The Kyuubi grinned maliciously, and bright balls of light winked into existence around Naruto's head and resumed their spinning. Naruto grinned and tensed, ready to punch around aimlessly again.

Until they were both struck in the face by a gust of sandy air.

Shaking their faces and looking in the direction of the intrusion, to the demon's left, they saw sand streaming in at a steady pace, filling the floor slowly. And this had to happen just when the water was finally gone, they both moaned.

They looked at each other, and a silent agreement passed between them. The kyuubi threw out some chakra into Naruto, and when the human's eyes became slitted and orange and the demon could see through them, Naruto followed the trail into the darkness of the corridor.

The demon, extremely curious as always regarding the world it had not seen for such a long while, was gawking at the view the human 'eyes' provided. Sadly there was not much to see except corridor after corridor after corridor. The paths they travelled through had a strange way of making one loose orientation, but thankfully the flow of the sand gave a good sense of direction to the duo.

In time, the walls started to brighten, and the sand begun to gust with prodigous force. It took some trouble to move ahead, but then a doorway seemed to materialize in front, and the light through it was blinding. With a push, Naruto passed through it.

**_Now THIS is a sight to see_**, the demon said gleefully.

_But how is this here?_ Naruto wondered. When its exhilaration passed, the demon began wondering too.

* * *

><p>There was a huge sun in the sky, and it burned brighter and hotter than the real thing. Huge dunes, larger than words could describe, rolled aimlessly in ways real deserts could never simulate, scattered around by the gale force winds. And in the midst of this roiling mass of discomfort incarnate, there walked a boy with red hair.<p>

His eyes burned, both from heat and the scalding winds, and he crouched and huddled into himself, clutching his knees.

The Sand-Demon was on the outside; he knew that much at least. And while she was there, he was here. Simple, yes. It still didn't change the fact that he felt the agonizing desire for blood even on the inside. It was a purely psychological agony. A conditioned addiction. Not that he would know what _that_ meant.

A gasp sounded from behind.

He moved his arm reflexively, a swish with a clenching fist, and he awaited the sense of control over the particles all around him, the satisfaction that came with bursting flesh and spurting blood. It never came. The sand remained motionless, as did the person who stood behind him. His nails dug into his palm, not drawing blood despite the trouble they gave its skin.

He turned around and saw it was the blond boy from that day at the hospital. He who had denied him the blood of the ninja that he couldn't manage to kill in the arena. He who held something within him so like his own beast. And he had wanted to kill him so badly.

He screamed, the bloodlust eating at his insides and making his face contort in impotent rage. He rushed the horrified looking ninja, but tripped on his own feet and landed in the sand, face down.

"Gaara?" the other kid shouted, hands coming up in a guard position. "W-what are you doing in my mindscape?"

Gaara, as he had been named, lifted his head up and faced Naruto, amidst the gnashing of teeth and trembling of his face. "It's not yours."

He got up and rushed Naruto again.

"This is where I come when I sleep. Where every moment... Is hell..."

He grabbed the lapels of Naruto's jumpsuit and pulled them towards himself, trying to strangle him. As it was, he barely caused Naruto to choke. Even that effort cost him though, and he fell into the sand again, kneeling.

"Are you my next nightmare? The next person I cannot... kill?" He panted, arms quivering.

A moment later, he felt two arms lifting him up, carrying him from under his back. He tried to fight them off, but couldn't do so.

He was rocked back and forth, and soon he let his eyes press against the arms carrying him. The relief it brought was a stranger to him in all ways, and soon enough he wasn't aware of any sand or heat at all. He weakly resisted the hold once again, but now his heart wasn't into it. He just pressed his eyes down further, bringing his arms closer to his own chest...

In moments, he lost consciousness, and he felt blissful.

* * *

><p>This was not a good day for Naruto. In fact, Naruto did not know whether it was day or night, so he settled for thinking that he just couldn't have a good day <em>or<em> night anymore.

He carried Gaara out of the desert he had found the psycho in, and guided by a inexplicable sense of direction, ended back in the corridor where the Kyuubi resided. He put his burden down on the fox's side of the corridor, just as he felt the demon leave his mind.

"**I told you not to do this,**" the demon said, seriousness dripping off its every facet.

Naruto just stared back incredulously. "You're the one who said that bringing him here would prove if he's free of that Sand thing's influence!"

"**Yet I told you not to do it,**" the kyuubi replied, nodding sagely. "**But since you brought him here, we might as well begin.**"

"Begin what?!" Naruto screamed, clutching at his hair.

"**Why, his deconditioning, of course. You would like to have a slave wouldn't you? I know I would.**"

If Naruto could look at himself, he would have found the urge to poke at his own twitching eyes irresistable.

It wasn't fair that he couldn't tell if the fox was joking or not, anyways. If not for the established fact that the demon was a DEMON, Naruto could have said with complete confidence that it was a retard.

"No I don't want a slave! And that one would eat me alive anyways, slave or not!" Naruto complained, still horrified. But his words fell on deaf ears. The Kyuubi was already reaching out of the cage with orange tendrils of chakra that proceeded to promptly bonk Gaara upside the head, so Naruto just walked as far away as he could.

The kid with the tattoo on his head sat up and stood up in one fluid motion instantly. He rushed towards the cage and started banging his head on the bars.

**Clunckclunckclunck** went his head while Naruto stared in fatally high levels of disbelief.

"What did you do to him?!" He shrieked, watching the display of... whatever it was was too horrible to define.

To see someone so scary reduced to a... well.

The fox was just shaking its head, mumbling to itself. "**One starts screaming about Ramen and the other abuses his own head... The chakra is supposed to push a mind to consciousness, not shove it into oblivion...**"

Naruto was not willing to theorize, though. He jumped to the cage and pulled Gaara back, shaking him awake like someone would _normally_ do.

"Hey, psychohead! Wakey wakey!"

The psychohead woke.

Naruto got a look into Gaara's eyes, eyes that for once were not filled with hate and outlined with bags of exhaustion. They were completely relaxed and unfocused, and when Naruto let go of the Sand ninja, he slipped to the floor, catching himself on shaky arms. He settled into a squat, still looking down.

"Um, Gaara?" Naruto said, inching back steadily.

The Fox went on grumbling about how Naruto's head couldn't even get _chakra_ to work the way it was supposed to inside it, but it looked on with interest.

Gaara looked around, not really focusing on anything, just vaguely gazing at the floor. "It doesn't hurt here," he said in a very pleasant voice.

"It always hurted not to kill on the outside, and it always hurted not to kill on the inside, but now I don't..."

Naruto stopped budging backwards, extreme pity warring with fear on his face. He found it hard to even imagine what bloodlust like that would feel like.

Funny blue eyes looked up from beneath funny crimson hair and demanded, "You will keep me here."

Naruto spluttered for a moment before crossing his arms in indignity. "Oh hell no, not you too, this place is crowded enough with THAT thing here as it is. Where are you gonna stay?"

Gaara froze up, staring a hole into the only other human there. A few seconds later, his eyes teared up and he began sobbing where he stood. He turned to the giant creature of chakra and repeated his plea, screaming, "Let me stay! Please!"

The demon, however, was a demon. It began to cackle in sadistic amusement. "**Let you stay, hmm? You are quite the specimen of an emotional wreck, you deranged ape. You are begging me for a favour, yet you want to kill me at the same time. I can tell, you feel the urge to take over this place and rip us to bloody shreds as you do to all your victims. I suppose old habits die hard, don't they?**"

The fox looked at Gaara with a gaze so piercing it laid all bare, but the human flinced not even once, and Naruto watched, hypnotized at the raw display of dominance.

"**I respect your attempts more than that brats', though,**" the demon continued, breaking the staredown and laying its head on a tail again. "**You are quite fearless. Or you have forgotten what it is you creatures do when you feel fear. Unlike that idiot over there-**"

"Hey! It's MY mindscape, and I decide who gets to stay!" the insulted boy leapt up and proclaimed. He moved over in front of the distraught psycho and fixed him with a stern glare.

"Look, I just don't understand what your problem is. I mean, sure, everyone hated you and you found a purpose in... killing, but aren't you free of all that right now? I mean, come on! You even slept in here! Why do you have to talk like that?"

"Why won't you let me stay?" Came a gasping reply. "Didn't you say that you found a purpose in making... friends? In forgiving people, even if they hated you once?" The boy was spitting out his words with a strange unfamiliarity, as if 'friends' was a word in a whole other language.

"You don't know what it's like at every other moment... All those voices, and all that blood... and... Mother..."

Gaara collapsed into a heap, and Naruto suddenly couldn't take anymore.

He bent in front of him and held his shoulder, and tried to find the right words to say.

"Look, Gaara, I just don't know what's happening here, and I'm as much a prisoner here as you are. But, okay. Stay here as long as you can."

Gaara kept on sobbing, hiccuping in his distress, and Naruto's heart bled in pained empathy. He kept patting the distraught boy's shoulder, and waited for him to calm down. It did not show any signs of happening soon though, so Naruto dragged him over to the wall behind him and set him against it, sitting beside him.

After an interval of time that felt like an hour, Gaara was asleep and his head had collapsed into Naruto's lap, wetting his tracksuit with tears.

Naruto glanced at the silent and huge presence that was looking at the spectacle blankly.

"How did this happen?" Naruto asked very seriously.

"**I don't know enough. We'll have to go back and see if the sand is still here,**" came an equally serious answer.

Naruto went back to looking at the tearstained face resting on his legs.

"**You were very compassionate to someone who would have killed you without a second thought were you in a place where he could control his sand,**" The kyuubi observed.

Naruto, a little surprised, looked up. It had seemed like praise, but the demon's face had no expression whatsoever. None.

"Naah, he wouldn't have... Well, he won't do it now, anyways... I think."

* * *

><p>Meanwhile, on the outside, two jinchuriki slept, one encased in stone, one surrounded by enemies from the sound. Each was as unaware of their surroundings as each other, and the surroundings were equally unaware of what went on in their minds. A giant tanuki felt a little odd all of a sudden, as if something vital to it had vanished for a while, but then went on with its rampage, savage with bestial delight.<p>

* * *

><p><strong>I realized I was following the outside world with the chunin exams so thoroughly that this introspection and mindscape stuff, things this fic was really meant to explore, were getting ignored. But the plot, which is based on resolving daheck thats going on with Naruto and the Kyuubi, is moving on. And hopefully will continue to.<strong>

**X.x  
><strong>


	11. Of Clones and Deserts

**My rate**

** of update**

** has a very**

**** tragic fate.**  
><strong>

* * *

><p>Orochimaru chased after the shadow clone of the Third for a while, until he realised that it was just a shadow clone. He chucked a kunai at its back, only for it to replace itself with a log. He skidded to a stop to survey the battlefield, and found battle everywhere, but no Hokage.<p>

Suddenly he felt a sword pierce through his throat. It sliced right from behind, straight through his spine-

"Kai!" Orochimaru came back to his senses, more enraged than he had thought possible. He spotted the Third standing on a rooftop behind him, hands still raised in their seals. He gave chase.

Then he realised it was another shadow clone. And the cycle went on.

After a while, he realized that he was being extremely stupid with his approach to the entire debacle that his invasion had become. Wasn't he supposed to make a barrier to trap his sensei before everything else? And why wasn't he making clones of his own to find his target?

He did just that, and while his constructs searched his vicinity, he took a moment to see what was wrong with him, because obviously he wasn't naturally retarded.

He came across the problem; a small clot of chakra was blocking his jugular artery and his brain was asphyxiating.

"Seriously?!" he growled. "That is sooo contrived!"

Of all the rotten luck he had to have, he just HAD to be crippled in the start of everything by something that barely made any sense!

He dissipated the extra-stubborn chakra with a burst of his own, and a cloud of maroon escaped from his mouth. He fell down coughing, clutching his neck.

With a sudden increase in clarity, he realised that he had not been able to do pretty much anything that day. But he could not leave without accomplishing at least something.

"Sasuke..." He headed off back towards the arena. He'd intended for the Uchiha to mature his drive for power for a while to make his bond with Orochimaru stronger when the time came, but he could do without.

* * *

><p>Battles cannot last forever, fortunately.<p>

Konoha suffered, but it did not suffer much. Some structural damage, the loss of some forces, and an irreparable loss of reputation for almost getting overwhelmed in the middle of an exam, of all things, but nothing much more than that.

Civilians were safe, families were reunited with one another, and the will of fire ran strong once more.

And that was not the end of it.

Orochimaru had to run. His forces had been exposed, and now Konoha was wary. It would be a long time before that snake reared its head up again, and in the meantime, the village in the leaves could grow safely. But while the village was doing exactly that...

"Are you sure we can't seal him off into one of our own people, Sir?" A nameless ninja asked, standing by the Hokage at the edge of the stadium.

"The idea tempted me, but It would be a lot more trouble than it's worth. We'd have to find another newborn child to imprison it in, and well, we all know how newborn jinchuriki tend to turn out."

Naruto was a VERY lucky exception to that rule.

The Hokage knew that the answer would not satisfy, and truth be told he really wanted to do just what had been suggested. But-

"**Ughhhh... Gaara, anytime now! Wakey wakey, you dumb brat!**"

-the One-tailed beast lying on the ground in front of them, prone and unmoving, was really a wildcard at that stage. Heck, the Third didn't even know if he could be sealed into anything at all, considering that it was sealed just fine into someone else a few hours ago.

"I mean, look at him, Sir. He's totally out of whatever energy empowered him. And he can't go back into his old seal at all."

"Which doesn't make sense. Bijuu have a near unlimited reservoir of chakra at their disposal. So where has that energy all gone?"

The Hokage turned away from the demon in front of him and surveyed the rest of the bruised and battered arena. He tried to, at least. His eyes inevitably found their way to two giant animals lying near each other, feebly lifting their limbs for an attempted attack before falling back in exhaustion. They were so tired that they couldn't even fully mouth the insults the wanted to say.

"Where's Jiraiya?" The Gokage asked no one in particular.

"He's transfusing his Toad with some chakra right now, trying to get him out of here."

"Heh," the old man chuckled. "To think that the summons are so tired that they can't even muster the energy to go back."

"Um, on a similar vein, Lord Hokage, what are we going to do with the snake?"

"I sent for Anko Mitarashi to deal with that particular problem. There are some things I'd like that snake to clarify for our sakes, and I think she can get through to him."

"Hmm. I can't seem to decide whom I'd like to run from more."

"I can understand that," the Hokage let out absent mindedly. "Send for Kakashi, Yamato," he asked the now named shinobi.

"You called, Lord Hokage?" Kakashi replied, conveniently there.

"I think you're late for your report. Not that I expected otherwise, but I'd like to have it, all the same," The hokage spoke in a tone that would have made a more moral man die of shame, but Kakashi already had his face hidden.

Shame did not come so easily to him.

"I managed to save Naruto and Sasuke, and the four shinobi that they were battling have been subdued. I left some of my dogs and shadow clones to guard them, and-" Kakashi took a few seconds to yawn, "-everyone you imprisoned in the ground is still in the ground."

With but a few handseals from the man responsible, the ground under them all shuddered and a mass of people that were not there suddenly were, still sleeping soundly.

"Take me to your students," Kakashi was ordered.

They jumped across the arena and went over the walls, and then they dashed on to the hospital. Both of the students the two ninja sought were there, each unconscious and sporting a few broken bones apiece.

Once they got there and Sarutobi had them under his gaze, he finally relaxed. "I was sure that Orochimaru would get to at least one of these children before the day had ended. That being said-"

Suddenly, Sasuke's eyes opened wide and he muttered a single sentence, "Ssuck on it, Ssensei." He poofed into nothingness.

* * *

><p>Back inside the sewer that was now dry, two boys and a bijuu sat in silence. The humans had been glaring at each other for an indeterminable period of time, and the demon was lying down hoping that this period of time remained indeterminable, just happy that the annoying brats had something else to annoy.<p>

All good things come to an end, however.

"Ya know, there's really no point to all this. I mean, you just cried yourself to sleep on my shoulder just a while back, you might as well drop the whole I'm-so-dangerous act," Naruto deadpanned.

Gaara snarled, blushing. He tried to say something, but stumbled over his words.

Naruto just sighed, rubbing his forehead. And he'd thought he was bad with people.

"Can we just skip to the point where I say that we need to find your desert again and you just say yes?" Naruto droned.

"No," Gaara droned back.

"Aww Come ON! You won't even tell me why!" Naruto cried out, rising up and beginning to pace around. After Gaara's continued silence, the pacing became stomping and finally he came to a stop in front of the other boy.

He loomed over him menacingly, his eyes barely a foot from Gaara's, and contemplated how to break him.

Even the Kyuubi deigned to look over, hopeful that he would say something intelligent and meaningful.

"You ever taste ramen before?" Naruto asked, a cheerful grin magically appearing on his face.

The demon shut its eyes once more, feeling stupid for even hoping.

Confused, Gaara just shook his head.

Naruto fell back on his rump, sighing. "Why does no-one I'm stuck with ever like the things I like?" He complained, looking back at the demon sourly. "I mean, even hanging out with Sasuke is better than this. At least he has the decency to be interested..." He trailed off, noticing no-one was listening to him.

"At least I always knew he was interested, though he's such an epic bastard his face never even twitched to show it. How did I know, anyways?" he asked aloud.

"**Because he insulted you about everything sooner or later?**" The demon quipped.

"I guess so- Oh. You think you're reeeal funny, don't ya?" The fox's face was turned away, conveniently hiding its smug grin.

"Well, I always managed to insult him back, so there," Naruto stuck his tongue out, for good measure.

His blood froze upon hearing a chuckle sound out from where he knew the other intruder of his mind was sitting. He turned around to see an absent minded smile on the otherwise psychotic kid.

Seeing Naruto's surprised face probably reminded him that he was supposed to be the bad guy there, and he redonned his scowl. The proverbial blood was in the water though, and Naruto grinned like a shark.

"Wow, you actually DO have a funny bone in your scrawny body!" he laughed, sitting down in front of the now somewhat disturbed looking Sand nin. He leaned forward once again, but this time that wasn't all he did.

"Poke," Naruto said, doing so as well. Gaara tried to swat away the hand, but it was relentless. IT poked him in every place imaginable, and he squirmed and swatted at it with increasing annoyance until he could bear it no longer and he stood up, shoving his aggressor away.

"Nyah nyah!" Naruto taunted him, slapping the side of his face and running off to one side, vanishing into the nearby darkness of the unlit sewer tunnels. With a roar of impotent rage, Gaara followed, running like a madman.

The demon, left behind, was actually quite impressed. Then after a moment of thought, it decided that it all wasn't really that impressive. After all, it took a lot of energy to NOT chase after Naruto with the intent to kill. With a burst of chakra sent to tag along with its jinchuriki, The Kyuubi closed its giant eyes.

* * *

><p>Gaara drifted through the endless seeming corridors of wherever he was. The occasional chuckle echoed through a particular exit now and then, letting Gaara have a place to keep aiming towards. He wanted nothing more than to crush the other kid so thoroughly his blood would flow like a river, and the fact that he couldn't do so burned him to his core.<p>

But he followed. It was something, at least.

Soon, he came upon a few piles of sand strewn in front of him. He stared, and walked on.

The sand grew in quantity, and hearing those infernal bouts of mocking laughter once more from in front of him, Gaara walked on.

In time, but at what time he could not tell, he found himself in a vast desert. A desert that while hot and unforgiving in normal times, was serene and cool in the light of dusk.

He stepped on, unsure of what to make of it. Nothing sullied his mind; he was still his own self. He stopped and looked around at the endless expanses, doing nothing.

"Wow."

Gaara turned around and saw he who he was chasing for that entire time, walking around like the place was his own.

Gaara dashed towards him, arms raised to strangle, but in a parody of what happened before, he fell on his face again. He felt a hand helping him up and he took it, then decided to support himself on it for a little while longer.

"I'm jealous, Gaara. All I have in my head is a bunch of sewers. To think you've got all... This, buried right over here," Naruto joked, tapping Gaara's temple once.

"It burns, at other times," Gaara said listlessly, staring into the distance. "Burns, and... Hates."

Gaara could feel the arm around him tightening. Uncomfortable all of a sudden, he shrugged it away and stood on his lonesome.

"Kyuubi says we need to find your demon, Gaara. If we don't, you'll never be able to go back to the outside."

Sighing, Gaara sat down on the sand. Sighing further, he dropped his back onto the ground, lying down and staring into the violet sky.

"I don't want to go outside. I don't want to go back anywhere. Everything is just... perfect." Tears threatened to break out at a moments notice.

"Aww, that's not the Gaara I know. I thought you'd be raring to go and get some blood, you know? Killing? Something you love?"

That sentence tugged the restrained tears out, and soon Gaara was bawling like a child. In a little moment, Naruto realized that Gaara still _was_ a child, and a very very sad one at that.

In a broken voice that kept getting worse, Gaara said many things. Of how he could never feel the love of another, how he was held away from the world by a barrier of hatred and a barrier of sand, how all he thought he knew was a lie in the dusk of his childhood and he was just a weapon, nothing more... He could be nothing more!

He _had_ to kill! He had no other reason to exist! But what an existence. To dance around madness when blood was scarce, when he could not exercise his desire to kill...

When he slept, he couldn't sleep. When he stayed awake for days upon days and then inevitably collapsed, and the demon would fight him for control, it tore him apart. And then he woke up again and felt more dead then alive.

And he was finally free, finally at peace, and he didn't want it to end, but he didn't want to be alone, and he wanted to be alone, and the only person around was Naruto and he was... He was so like him and so much happier... Why was he happy when he himself suffered so much in every single moment of his life? Why?

"Because, Gaara..." Naruto trailed off, lightly drumming his fingers on Gaara's bony chest, which still hiccuped from all the blubbering. "All it takes to be happy is a smile... Wait, that didn't sound right."

Gaara stared back, not comprehending.

"Ugh, I'm so bad at words and stuff! Sorry Gaara," he muttered, scratching the back of his head. Then a moment later he added, "Shut up, furball."

He took a while to think, then he began again, talking slowly and mincing his words more often than not.

"I was, like, 10 years old when I had to set up my own apartment and everything. I really didn't want to leave Grampa Hokage's house, and when I left, I kinda said a lot of bad things to him. And when I was all set up, It was really lonely."

Gaara was hiccuping less frequently, listening to Naruto raptly from where he lay, and Naruto kept up his mindless drumming from where he sat next to Gaara's chest.

"Anyways, I avoided seeing him for a long time, hid out in my house for a while, but he came back a couple of days later with a bowl of Ramen. And boy, was it the best Ramen I ever ate! But that's not the point." He coughed a little, self conscious. "The point is, he did come back. And even though I really didn't want to see him then... I really did want to see him then."

He gave an impish smile as he almost threw Gaara's words back at his still bemused face.

"I saw you smiling earlier, Gaara, and smiles only come when someone is happy. Sometimes seeing someone else smile can make you happy too." Naruto gave off a grin as bright as the sun. "And sometimes you may not want to smile but still want to feel happy. All you have to do, Gaara, is give people a chance. They come around, trust me. I have so many friends now, and once I thought I would never have any."

"But... But they're afraid of me, all of them."

"Trust me Gaara. All you need to do to get them to be your friends is to smile more often. Ya know, show them that you won't just kill them if they come nearer towards you."

"Is that why you're so happy? Friends?"

"Yep."

They sat still for a while, Gaara now peaceful, lounging in catharsis, and Naruto reminiscing about old Hokages and Ramen bowls.

"At least you have a brother and a sister. I don't have a family," Naruto spoke out after licking his parched lips.

"I do," Gaara acquiesced. In the silence that followed, Gaara had the strangest feeling. It was as if words were exploding on his tongue, and all he had to do was open his mouth to let them run away.

"You know why Kankuro wears face paint?" Gaara blurted.

With those floodgates open, they talked of many things. The way they went around their lives, although Gaara really had one thing to say about that-

"I once delayed the lower part of the sand coffin, and the Grass Ninja's heart popped out of his ribs."

"Unhuh," Naruto grimaced.

"It was still beating."

"..."

"It looked so funny."

-and killing wasn't that good a conversation keeper.

The way the people around them were, which they both had a wealth of information for. The way their village looked and felt...

"It's a lot like this, actually," Gaara said, sitting up and digging his hands through the sand. "A lot more windy and a lot more hot..."

He looked out into the horizon. He stood up and tried to look even further, but then dropped back down.

"I never really looked at it, but I think it would be... beautiful."

The tranquility was broken by a loud roar, the explosion of a sun above and the restarting of the winds they had seen before, all coming back at once.

"GAARA!" A guttural voice barked out, and before Naruto knew it, he was back in his own sewers, facing the cage once more.

He blinked about aimlessly for a while. He got the feeling that something had gone horribly, horribly wrong, but he couldn't do anything about it and it was making him frantic. "Gaara?" He called out. "Are you..."

"**It seems his own demon finally woke up**," The fox said, opening its eyes and giving out a wide, fang showing yawn.

"Damn. That thing sure didn't sound happy."

"**The Ichibi never really was _happy_. Had the power of the very earth in that tail, and still whined about getting the shortest stick.**"

Naruto groaned in annoyance for an entirely different reason. "Ugh! To think that he was finally _not_ totally whacked in the head."

He collapsed onto the floor and sat cross-leggedy, harrumphing. His eyes did not feel the need to adjust to the dimness of his own home away from home, and he glared a hole into the featureless floor. On a whim, he tried to imagine a forest all around him with the sunlight seeping through the leaves, but nothing changed. "Darn," he muttered.

"**Don't take this the wrong way, kid. I still think you're the worst thing I ever set my eyes on, but... I didn't think you could have done that.**"

"Done what?" Naruto asked, dusting off his sleeve and looking at his nails, then passing a hand backwards through his hair.

After a little growl and a glare, the Kyuubi sighed. "**Making that other brat open up.**"

Naruto laughed. "Hey, I'm just awesome with people. Deal with it."

"**No wonder,**" the fox muttered, flicking its tail, which substituted as much as it could for an eye roll when the Kyuubi's eyes were closed.

"Now I just need to go wake up and see what's going on outside."

The kyuubi shrugged.

In a matter of seconds, Naruto vanished into wisps of chakra.

* * *

><p><strong><strong>Confound these ponies.<strong>**

**X.x**


End file.
